


Only the Good Die Young

by aghamora



Category: How to Get Away with Murder
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Bisexuality, F/F, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-07-12
Updated: 2016-11-23
Packaged: 2018-07-23 14:20:18
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 101,151
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7466631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aghamora/pseuds/aghamora
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“They don’t have much in common, she thinks for a moment. A few not-so-figurative skeletons in their closets, maybe. A handful of secrets they’ll both take to their graves. A similarly shitty taste in men. But out of nowhere, it dawns on Laurel that there’s probably no one on earth who understands her better than the girl sitting before her now.”</p><p>Or, post 2x12, Laurel and Michaela cling to each other in the chaos around them, and maybe, just maybe, fall in love along the way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. I

**Author's Note:**

> Eyyyy I’m back!! This time finally with the Lauraela multi-chap I’ve been wanting to write since forever. I’ve written a decent amount of smut for these two but never something meaningful, and so far I’m having a blast working on this :) It is a work in progress, which right now is sitting at 20 chapters and around 60k words, and might shape up to be around 100k by the end (hopefully but don’t quote me on that!). I don’t have an updating schedule set in stone, but I’d like to get a good amount of this published before the new season starts because this includes my headcanon for Michaela’s backstory and I don’t want the show to spoil that before it can see the light of day.
> 
> A few additional notes: this begins in 2x13, and pretends Wes and Laurel never kissed. This fic will also feature a few explicit chapters, but since overall it’s not an explicit fic I chose to set the rating at M. If you're interested, I've made a playlist of sorts for this fic [here](http://8tracks.com/aghamora1/back-off-she-s-mine).
> 
> Finally, onto the fic! This chapter cuts off at sort of an odd place and I apologize, but it was going to get too long otherwise. It also gets moderately more lighthearted from here ;)

She’s in the woods.

Not just any woods; _the_ woods, The Sam Woods, on the outskirts of campus – and she’s running. Running for her life, as fast as she can, faster than she’d known she could. She doesn’t know how long she’s been at this, but the muscles in her legs burn and ache, and her breathing is ragged, and she’s lost her way, gone off the path, turned around from whatever direction she’d been heading in before. Not that she’d been heading in any particular direction.

She doesn’t know. Doesn’t know why she’s running, or where; she only knows that she has to, that something’s chasing her, and somehow, in her bones, she has the sense that it’s more of a some _one_ than a some _thing_ , growing closer by the second.

They’re close. Getting closer, just a breath away, right behind her.

It’s almost too dark to see, the silver moonlight filtering down through the branches of the trees and barely lighting her way. The only sounds she can hear are the crunching of leaves beneath her feet and her own gasping, frantic pants. She’s been running so long that every breath she sucks in feels heavy and hot, like lava in her lungs. The air is cool around her, thick with rain and the smell of dirt and lighter fluid and smoke – God, the _smoke_ … It’s almost suffocating in its intensity, though there isn’t a fire in sight.

She’s heading towards a clearing in the distance, staggering and stumbling around bushes and vaulting over branches. Darkness seems to slither towards her from every angle, boxing her in, and all she can think to do is run, run, _run_ , but somehow, no matter how fast she runs, she knows she hasn’t moved an inch. The clearing keeps getting farther and farther away the closer she gets. There’re faces in the trees, now; ones that look vaguely familiar, but they’re blurred beyond recognition, and she can’t quite make them out. There’s whispering, too, hushed tones that wash over the otherwise silent forest, swarming around her, until finally she clamps her hands over her ears to block them out and slows her pace. And then-

Something catches her foot.

And it ends how every chase scene in the movies does: she trips, flying forward and feeling her ankle give a sickening _pop_ out of its socket, and landing in a pile of damp leaves, a sniveling, shaking, pathetic mess on the ground. She waits, for a second, trembling and screwing her eyes shut, waiting for the death blow to come raining down from above.

It never comes. Instead, the instant she raises her head, she finds herself face to face with Sam Keating.

He’s paler in death, eyes glazed-over, blood oozing down the side of his face from the hideous, gaping hole in his head. The lines in his face are more pronounced, his skin a sickly hue, not quite rotting but drooping, in an odd lopsided kind of way. Recoiling at the sight, she tries to scream, tries desperately to beg for help, and nothing comes out but a barely-audible croak.

After a moment he opens his mouth, and his voice is steady, almost warped in its deepness. “You killed me.”

“No,” she manages to sputter, her stomach lurching. “N-no, no, W-Wes, it was _Wes_ -”

“It was _you_.”

Shaking so hard that her teeth chatter, she finally manages to prop herself up and angle herself away. She closes her eyes once more – _out of sight, out of mind, Michaela, out of sight, out of mind, breathe, breathe_ – and tries to do just that: steady her breathing, but it’s coming in half-hysterical gasps now, and she can feel a panic attack hurtling its way relentlessly toward her. Her body is violently, painfully awake. It _hurts_. She doesn’t know what hurts, which part of her; all she knows is that she _hurts,_ all over, every ligament and nerve and joint and muscle prickling, even down to her bones.

Everything is silent, for the longest minute in the world. The whispering gradually grows softer and fades away, and so she opens her eyes, praying that the apparitions will be gone.

But they aren’t.

It’s Rebecca who comes, next.

Rebecca, in her same torn-up jeans and ratty clothes and huge dark blots of eyeliner encircling her eyes, which are sunken in like Sam’s. Rebecca, half-decomposing, her arm gory shades of black and grey, the flesh dead, decaying. _Decay_. That’s the only word Michaela can come up with to describe her. She’s in a state of horrifying, irreversible decay, and the stench almost makes her gag. Her face is skeletal, a gruesome hole in her cheek where flesh should be, like some animal has hollowed out the bone. Her body looks like it’d collapse into a pile of rotting flesh if she took even one step forward, arms hanging limply at her sides, pieces of meat about to slip off the bone.

Her message is the same.

“You killed me.”

There’s no sneer in her voice, no typical lilt of sarcasm she would always use in life; just the words, just the _fact_ , calmly-spoken and grim as ever. A sob escapes Michaela before she can swallow it, rattling through her chest, and she clamps her palms over her ears again, tight as she can, drawing her knees up to her chest.

“No. No, you’re… you’re not dead, go away, _go away_ -”

That’s what she’d always been told as a kid: tell the monsters under her bed to go away, leave her alone, and they would. Somehow, she has the sense that this… This isn’t the same. That these people are monsters, _demons_ that she’ll never be able to exorcise.

Sinclair is to her left, then. Clothes bloodied. Head split open like a melon, like Sam’s. Everything seems to speed up, like time is on fast-forward, turning seconds into mere flashes before her eyes. They all loom over her, forming a circle with their beady eyes locked on her, and she tries to run, tries to haul herself to her feet, but she can’t move, not a muscle. It feels like her limbs are cemented to the dirt beneath her, and a weight is pressing down on her chest, squeezing the air out of her, coiling itself around her chest and constricting. She can’t breathe. She can’t breathe, can’t _breathe_ …

“Stop!” There’s another voice, now. She thinks it may be hers. Isn’t sure. Can’t be sure. It doesn’t sound human. _She_ doesn’t sound human. “Stop! I didn’t… didn’t – I, go away, goaway-”

Philip is there on her right. Not dead. Terrifyingly alive, expression similarly hollow, impassive as a statue. It doesn’t take her much by surprise when she feels a sudden tug on her hair, jerking her head up and exposing her neck. It’s then that she sees the knife in his hand, sees it catch the moonlight and gleam. She still can’t breathe. She thinks she can feel hands around her throat, too. Sam’s. Like he’d done to Rebecca. Like he’d done to _Lila_. She can hear the voices around her again, but they’re unintelligible, speaking in tongues like the demons they are. Her lungs cry out for air, throat tightening, eyes bulging in some invisible grasp.

It’s so much agony that the slice of Philip’s knife is almost sweet release. It cuts blessedly easily – not painlessly, but _easily_ , like her flesh is butter, offering no resistance. She’s vaguely aware of the blood pouring from the wound. It’s hot. Scalding.

The voices crescendo. Whoever was holding her hair lets go, and she falls back, meeting the earth, a limp, lead weight as she bleeds out. Sam is gone. Rebecca, too – and Philip and Sinclair. But the voices are louder, now. They’re muffled, but as she clings to consciousness, feeling herself slip fast, she thinks she can just make out what they’re saying.

_Michaela._

It’s a feminine voice. Warm. Almost perplexingly so. She can feel herself moving, vibrating. Being… _shaken_. Still, she can’t breathe. Her hands go to her throat, and come away coated with her own blood. It burns, too, so bad it feels like her flesh is dissolving on contact. This must be what it’s like, burning in hell, licks of flame eating at her body for all eternity.

_Michaela. Michaela!_

No. No – she recognizes that voice. She’s slipping, almost like she’s being absorbed down into the earth beneath her, but the voice offers her a lifeline, pulling her toward some blindingly white light that’s both impossibly close and impossibly far away, forward, out, up and up and-

“ _Michaela_!”

 

~

 

 

Michaela shoots up, propelled forward by a gasp.

It takes her a while to realize where she is, the fog of sleep still clouding her mind. She’s not in the woods – not anymore. It’s been replaced by the quiet sanctity of Asher’s house, with faint lines of orange streetlight seeping in through the blinds, and a light on down the hall. The room is peaceful and still, disturbed only by occasional snores from across the room, where she’s pretty sure Asher is lying, sprawled out on his bed still in his ridiculous dinosaur onesie. There’s cold leather beneath her. The couch, Michaela realizes.

And Laurel.

Laurel is there sitting up with her, half-awake, shaking her shoulder.

It all floods back to her after that. The couch – Asher’s couch. They’re camped out at Asher’s place, hunkered down in their makeshift safe house because of Philip, ‘Mr. Psycho killer-stalker dude,’ as Connor has affectionately code-named him. Somehow during the night she and Laurel had managed to arrange themselves semi-comfortably so that they could both share the couch, with her legs beside Laurel’s back and Laurel curled up on her side away from them. Her neck aches from sleeping at an angle, goosebumps prickling her skin from the cold. She looks around for her blankets, and finds them lying in a heap on the ground. Probably she’d kicked them off sometime during her nightmare.

A nightmare. That’s all it had been. Just a dream.

“Philip,” she manages to choke out, her hands reaching for her throat. She can still feel the pressure there, of hands around her neck. “I – he was… they were _all_ -”

“Hey,” Laurel soothes. She scoots closer, rubbing her shoulder gently, up and down. “It’s okay. You’re okay. It was just a nightmare.”

“Why are you-” She jerks back reflexively, frowning. “What-”

“You were saying Philip’s name in your sleep,” Laurel explains, pulling her arm back and sighing. “And… kicking me. Hard.”

“Oh.” She lowers her eyes, letting out a shaky breath. “I, um… Sorry. I-I was having a dream, I…”

She drifts off. Doesn’t know what she was planning on saying, really. It was a stupid dream – well, not stupid, but… Still, not real. She feels like a pathetic little kid, having night terrors. That’s not her. She has nothing to be afraid of. She’s okay.

Only she’s not. Not even a little.

“I still have nightmares sometimes, too,” Laurel confesses. “You don’t have to be ashamed of it.”

For a minute, all Michaela does is look at the girl seated next to her, eyes hazy with sleep and sympathy. Laurel looks different, somehow, in the dim orange light. She’s dressed in a loose Middleton t-shirt and sweatpants, face bare of makeup, less put-together than Michaela thinks she has ever seen her before. Her hair is tousled, one side of it thrown sloppily over her part. Her thin lips are pursed, forehead creased with worry, and she’s looking at her with sympathy, yeah, but it’s not the judgmental kind of sympathy. Not pity.

It’s… understanding.

That freaks her the fuck out. She doesn’t need – or particularly _want_ – anyone’s understanding. She doesn’t want to talk about her _feelings_ , or go trudging up old secrets or skeletons in closets. She just wants-

Sleep. God, more than anything she just really wants to _sleep_.

“I’m gonna-” Michaela shakes her head, swinging her legs over the side of the couch and standing. “I-I’m going to use the restroom.”

It’s a lame excuse, but it’s all she can come up with in her shaken and sleep-addled state. Numbly, she makes her way out of the room, doing her best to tiptoe and keep from waking Connor and Oliver, who lay cuddled together under a pile of blankets on the carpet. Connor has his head on Oliver’s chest. She thinks she can see a droplet of drool hanging out of the corner of his mouth, and she almost laughs; for some reason she wouldn’t have pegged him as a drooler. But the half-laugh dies before it can leave her lips, as her words flood back to her, when she’d asked him not to transfer – to stay, here with her, because she can’t do this alone, can’t survive in this mess by herself.

She gets it, though. Gets the need to escape, get away, start over. Run. Normally her instinct is _fight_ but these days, the wearier she becomes, the more tempting an option _flight_ is starting to seem.

So. She gets it, him wanting to leave. Doesn’t mean she likes it – but she gets it.

Shaking the thought away, she makes her way out of the room and down the hall, stopping at the second door on the right, the bathroom, and stepping inside. Michaela locks it behind herself almost immediately, and turns to press her back up against the door, the breath she’d been holding hostage in her lungs finally escaping her. It’s surprisingly nice, Asher’s bathroom. Cleaner than she’d thought, but most likely he has a maid who takes care of that. It’s all white tile floors and navy-blue walls, the sink and toilet gleaming porcelain. Spotless.

As good a place as any to have a nervous breakdown.

The dream. The faces. Sam. Rebecca. Sinclair. All the blood on her hands. All the _death_ they’ve wrought. She thought she’d been good, not thinking about it. Blocking it out of her dreams, out of her thoughts.

Healing – if she can ever heal from this, ever be normal again.

It’s warm in the bathroom, heat blowing from an air vent up on the wall, but she’s shivering. She makes for the sink, turning the faucet to its coldest setting, cupping her hands, and splashing the water onto her face. She doesn’t know what she’s trying to accomplish, really. Some part of her faintly hopes the cold will shock her mind into forgetting, back into a happy state of _knowing_ but not _acknowledging_. That’s the only way to live with these kinds of things: shut it out. Put it away. Pretend to be normal, until the rest of the world starts to believe it, until maybe even _she_ starts to believe it.

It doesn’t work.

Michaela thinks about rooting through the cabinets. More than likely Asher has sleeping pills somewhere, after mowing down Emily Sinclair with his car like some fucked-up real-life version of Grand Theft Auto. Almost certainly he has something expensive, probably illegal and bought with daddy’s money, and that sounds _really_ damn good right about now, because it is, admittedly, pretty hard to get a good night’s sleep knowing a psycho killer is stalking your every move. She can see in the mirror that there are bags under her eyes, and a permanent slump in the shoulders. She just looks… heavier. Sadder.

But something stops her. There’s a heaviness in her head too, weighing her down all at once, so much so that she finds herself unable to keep standing. The fatigue rolls over her in waves, until every muscle in her body feels loose and rubbery. So instead of popping pills she plops down on the closed toilet seat and stares ahead blankly at the wall, as her breathing slows and the panic abates.

She’s okay. Really, she is. Or if she’s not okay now, she will be later. She will. She’s Michaela Pratt.

She’s okay. She _is_.

There’s a knock on the door just then, stirring her from her thoughts. Her first instinct is Philip. Philip, against all logic and reason, is here, pursuing her instead of the others, about to jam his face into the crack of the door like that guy in _The Shining_ and take her out with a few stabs of his knife – or maybe Philip is a gun kind of guy. Or the kind of psycho-murderer who prefers heavy objects for bludgeoning. Since there’s no trophy around, the ceramic toothbrush holder on the sink might do the trick, she thinks. Put her out of her misery effectively enough.

The voice that follows, however, is familiar, and warm.

“Michaela? Are you okay?”

Laurel.

“Fine,” she calls back, resting her head on her chin.

A pause. Then:

“Can I come in?”

 _No._ That’s the answer she wants to give, but instead, something inside her – some tiny, itty bitty part of her that _really_ doesn’t want to be alone, anymore, _can’t_ be alone – compels her to answer differently.

“Yeah,” she tells her, sighing. “Yeah, fine.”


	2. II

“Hey.”

The word, even non-threateningly spoken as it is, seems to make Michaela flinch. She’s sitting on the toilet, all hunched in on herself as if she’s trying to retreat into her own body, sizing her up a bit like a scared animal.

She’s seen Michaela disheveled, before. Half-hysterical, the night Sam died, sobbing uncontrollably. But she’s never seen her so…

 _Tired_. There’s no other word for it. World-weary and beaten down, like a balloon someone has let all the air out of. She looks like she hasn’t slept in days, too, and Laurel doesn’t blame her; with Philip stalking their every move, and especially after Frank, Lila… Even sleeping pills aren’t doing much to combat her insomnia. Most nights she dreams that she’s Lila up on the roof of that sorority house, with Frank’s hands wrapped around her throat, and it’s never long before she flies up in bed, sweaty and sobbing.

So, yeah. She’s been avoiding sleeping, like she’s been avoiding a lot of things. And normally, knowing Michaela like she does, she’d leave her alone, give her space, but she doesn’t want to avoid _this._

“I’m okay,” Michaela finally mutters, sucking in a breath. “I, uh, I’m fine.”

Laurel leans against the doorway. “You don’t look fine.”

Michaela doesn’t answer, just lowers her eyes and picks idly at one of her fingers.

“What happened? In the dream, I mean.”

Still, nothing. Laurel sighs. “You don’t have to tell me, if you don’t want to. Or… talk about it. But it helps, sometimes.”

Michaela makes a sound of disbelief, halfway between a scoff and a sniffle. “Like _you_ ever talk to anyone about anything.”

It’s a fair point. Laurel doesn’t bother to argue; she just folds her arms and waits, patiently, for the explanation she can sense coming – and before long, it does.

“They were all there,” Michaela murmurs, still without glancing up, so quietly Laurel has to strain to hear her. “Sam. Sinclair. Philip. _Rebecca_ , because for all we know, she’s probably dead too. I… I – look, I know it was stupid, and it _was_ , but-”

“Where were you?” she broaches the question gently. “The Hapstall’s place? The office? Or the woods?”

At that Michaela finally looks up, bewildered by her intuition.

“Mine are usually in one of those three,” Laurel explains. “Sometimes all of them, on bad nights.”

Another pause. Then:

“The woods.”

From the doorway, she thinks she can see Michaela trembling faintly, and so she goes for the sink, grabs the plastic cup resting on it, and fills it up with cool water. She crosses the room and holds it out to her, and after Michaela takes it, she sinks down to her knees in front of her.

“It’s okay,” she soothes, stifling a yawn. “It was just a dream.”

“It wasn’t, though. What we’ve done, it’s…” Michaela pauses and shakes her head. “We’re monsters. Each and every last one of us. And the worst part? If Philip suddenly broke in here and chopped us all to bits tonight, we’d probably deserve it.”

Laurel doesn’t answer. Doesn’t know what to say. It’s not like she can tell Michaela she’s wrong, because those are the truest words she’s heard in God knows how long, and in the chaos around them, that’s the only certainty she can really cling to: the fact that she’s a bad person.

“Do you ever think about it?” Michaela asks, suddenly, brown eyes flicking up to look at her. “Everything we’ve done? All the blood, and… death…”

“Yeah,” she agrees, softly, trying to summon up a smile. “If there’s a hell we’ve definitely already booked our tickets.”

Michaela doesn’t smile. Her eyes don’t twinkle like she even recognizes the admittedly half-assed joke. She just sags a little further under the weight of her own exhaustion, setting aside the cup and rubbing her hands up and down her arms, which Laurel can see are pimpled with goosebumps.  

“But… I still feel like I’m a good person, somehow.” She pauses, thinking for a moment. “I don’t know. It doesn’t make sense.”

“No,” she tells her, after a moment. “I get it. I do, too. And maybe we’re not bad people.” _But maybe that’s just what we tell ourselves so we can sleep at night._

They’re silent, for what must be the longest minute in the world. Laurel stays where she is, kneeling before her, listening to the faint sound of the air blowing out of the vent on the wall and the _plop plop plop_ of water droplets dripping from the faucet. Then, finally, Michaela looks up and wets her lips.

“I am in blood,” she recites, voice measured and hollow. Laurel recognizes the words immediately. “Stepped in so far that, should I wade no more-”

“Returning were as tedious as go o’er,” Laurel finishes with her, then grins. “ _Macbeth_?”

“I was Lady Macbeth, in high school,” she divulges, seeming to relax just the tiniest bit. “Back when I was convinced my calling was theater.”

Laurel almost laughs. It isn’t hard to picture that; Michaela is _definitely_ more than dramatic enough to be an actress, with precisely the right lack of chill to portray Lady Macbeth to a T.

“I bet you were good.”

“Oh, I was. I was _very_ good,” Michaela says, finally allowing herself to smile. “But it wasn’t practical as a career, so I decided to become a lawyer. And look where that got me. I could be acting on Broadway instead of hiding from a crazed murderer in this… stinking frat boy man cave.”

“Maybe Connor’s got the right idea,” Laurel sighs, and settles back so that she’s sitting instead of kneeling. “Transferring. Getting away from all this.”

“I could always just drop out,” Michaela muses aloud, as if talking more to herself than her. “Write bad crime novels in some tiny East Coast town under a pseudonym. Or dance in… Jay Z videos.”

Again, Laurel smirks. She’s too smart to be happy with that kind of life and they both know it; Michaela’s brain is wired for drama, excitement, and yeah, maybe not _murder_ drama and excitement – but hey.

At least they’re rarely ever bored. Laurel figures that’s something, at least.

“What’re you doing here anyway?” Michaela asks, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes. Laurel furrows her brow. “Why aren’t you over at Frank’s? Because FYI, he’s got a _way_ better shot at taking down Philip than any of the guys here.”

Frank. The name makes her stomach twist, something sinister and nauseating coiling there like a snake. Lila’s face flashes behind her eyes, unbidden; all the autopsy photos of her they’d seen during Rebecca’s trial, the sickly grey hue of her skin, the horrific description of what’d been done to her, how she’d been dumped, left to decay, windpipe crushed… It takes everything Laurel has in her not to shove Michaela off the toilet seat and hurl into it, right then, because the hands that had touched her so gently with all the love in the world had also strangled a girl to death in cold blood, and – _God._

She doesn’t know how she’s ever supposed to be okay again, after that.

“He was…” She drifts off. “He wasn’t who I thought he was.”

“Caleb wasn’t either,” Michaela confesses, choosing, surprisingly enough, not to press the Frank thing. “I don’t know what we’re doing, what we… _are_. But he called me a whore, and I was still dumb enough to sleep with him again. And I don’t know if I really care about him, if…” She pauses, swallowing. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything, anymore.”

They don’t have much in common, she thinks for a moment. A few not-so-figurative skeletons in their closet, maybe. A handful of secrets they’ll both take to their graves. A similarly shitty taste in men. But out of nowhere, it dawns on Laurel that there’s probably no one on earth who understands her better than the girl sitting before her now. It’s a sobering realization – one she doesn’t understand how she hasn’t had until now – and so with that in mind Laurel stands, holding out her hand for Michaela to take and trying to muster up a smile for her sake.

“Well, I do know one thing,” she tells her, yawning. “If I don’t sleep tonight I’m not going to be able to make myself get up for Property at nine, and I’d still like to pass law school if I can.” _Have something to show for all the murders, at least_ , she thinks, but bites her tongue.

There’s a time and a place for snark. It is not here.

For a while, Michaela just looks up at her, then back down to her hand, then back up at her, as if trying to assess what, exactly, would happen if she took it – and she doesn’t need to. Though Philip may see fit to change that soon, they’ve both made it through all this chaos physically unscathed, and neither of her legs are broken. But it isn’t that; not a hand to hold because she needs it, and both of them know it, and so eventually, very slowly, Michaela takes it, stands, and sucks in a breath, as if getting ready to steel herself to return to the outside world. Laurel can practically hear her inner mantra as she recites it. _I’m okay. I’m okay. I_ am _okay._

She half-wants to laugh. She knows that one by heart, too.

Laurel gives her hand a reassuring squeeze but doesn’t linger, letting it fall back to the other girl’s side after a moment, as they go for the door. They step outside, creeping down the hall as quietly as they can manage and tiptoeing around the sleeping Connor and Oliver on the ground. Thankfully the carpet makes their footfalls all but silent, and they make it back to the couch without incident, taking their places on the opposite ends and curling up underneath their blankets. Ten minutes pass in silence, only disturbed by Asher’s occasional, nasally snores. Laurel’s really starting to regret not bringing earplugs to this twisted little slumber party, and is just about to scream into her pillow when, out of nowhere, she notices movement on the other end of the couch.

Michaela is sitting up slightly, peering down at her over the heap of blankets, like she wants to say something – or rather, _do_ something, but before she does, she lies back down, then repeats the process: perking up, eyeing her, then settling back. It doesn’t take Laurel long to realize what she wants.

She wants to _snuggle_. Or – well, she wants to be held. Comforted. She knows that look as plain as day. She never thought she’d see it on Michaela, but she knows that look, and she sees it now, behind those big brown doe-eyes.

Finally, after a moment of consideration, Laurel settles onto her back and sighs, “You can come down here, if you want.”

Silence. Then, Michaela rolls over onto her side and shakes her head.

“I’m fine right here.”

Exhausted as she is, all Laurel does is pull the blankets up to her chin and mutter, “Suit yourself. Just… no more kicking, ‘kay?”

Michaela doesn’t answer. A minute passes. Then five. Ten. Laurel feels herself drifting in that endless, warm pool of blackness, fading from consciousness, even in spite of the horribly uncomfortable angle of her pillow that she’s sure her neck is going to make her pay for in the morning. Her muscles release their tension, her breathing slowing, and she’s just about to fall asleep-

The squeaky sound of someone moving on the leather couch, making their way down to her end, makes her stir.

She doesn’t have to open her eyes to know that it’s Michaela; the warm heat of her body as the other girl nestles in at her side, resting her head near her armpit and inadvertently jamming Laurel’s left arm down under her body, is enough to tell. Laurel readjusts without question, pulling her arm up and resting it idly on Michaela’s back, then scooting over just so, to allow her more room to settle in next to her.

Laurel doesn’t talk. Figures she doesn’t really have to. She could tease her, maybe; make fun of the Great Michaela Pratt for being a cuddler, but she doesn’t, and she won’t. Because Michaela looks more like a child than she’s ever seen her, with strands of her dark hair falling across her face, which is relaxed in slumber, serene, at _peace_ – the only peace they’ve had in months – and she’s not about to disturb that. She could make fun of her for this tomorrow, yeah. Tell the others. But she won’t.

They’ve got a psycho-murderer waiting to skin them alive and wear their faces as masks, or exact whatever other kind of B-rated horror movie torture methods he’s devised. Laurel figures that they’ve at least got to stick together, for now.

 

~

 

Three things register the moment Laurel comes to in the morning.

A bright light behind her eyelids; the early morning sun, pouring in through the blinds.

A wolf whistle, from somewhere across the room.

And a weight sprawled across her chest. A very _heavy_ weight.

She opens her eyes to look around, then her mouth to yawn, and very promptly gets a mouthful of Michaela’s hair, which she spits out immediately. Apparently sometime during the night Michaela had decided to all but sleep on top of her, and Laurel has no idea how she managed to fall asleep with her lungs being crushed by the other girl and her elbow jabbing into her ribs, but she decides not to dwell on it, and focuses her efforts on squirming out from underneath her, instead. That makes Michaela stir too, and she lifts her head, glancing around for a moment before finally realizing whose breasts she’d been using as a makeshift pillow, and shooting up quickly into a sitting position, scooting down to the other end of the couch and muttering a half-intelligible apology.

But it’s not quick enough to keep the source of the wolf whistle – _Asher_ – from noticing.

“Ooh la la,” he sing-songs, with a brief pelvic thrust. The dinosaur tail of his onesie wiggles when he does. “Some foxy lady lovin’ in the morning. See? I knew girls’ sleepovers really _are_ secretly kinky.”

Laurel rolls her eyes, sits up, and deadpans, “Yeah. They are. We really do get naked and have pillow fight orgies, right Michaela?”

Down at the other end of the couch, Michaela snorts. “Exactly.”

“Eight AM and I’m already hearing the word ‘orgy’?” Connor remarks, striding in from the kitchen with a pot of coffee and setting it down on the coffee table. Oliver follows not far behind, with five mugs clasped awkwardly in his hands. “I have found my people.”

Laurel snickers and reaches for the coffee, pouring herself a cup and bringing it to her lips.

“Yo, that’s one way we could get Philip off our backs!” Asher exclaims. “Invite him to get a piece of the action. Dude probably hasn’t gotten any in, like… ever.”

“Yeah, well, if we learned anything from the way he tied up the Hapstall’s,” Connor chimes in, “he could probably teach us a thing or two about BDSM.”

Laurel frowns into her mug. That’s a step too far even for them, and Michaela echoes that sentiment aloud with a sound of disgust, “Connor.”

“What?” He shrugs, filling up his cup with a sneer. “Nothing wrong with a little dark humor, _Michaela_. Lighten up.”

He seems like he wants to say more for a moment, but refrains for Oliver’s sake, and takes a seat on the couch between Laurel and Michaela to drink his coffee.

They sit around talking and drinking their coffee for a few minutes, before gathering up their pillows and blankets and getting ready to leave. As much as she’d like to wear her sweatpants and baggy Middleton U t-shirt to the office, Laurel changes out of them and into something moderately more presentable – a sleeveless purple blouse and leather knee-length skirt – and rolls up her blanket, taking a step towards the door after Connor and Oliver.

“So,” Oliver jokes, forcing a smile. “Same time tomorrow night?”

“No way,” Connor shoots back, stopping by the door to turn and look at the rest of them. “This floor? Isn’t good for my back. _Or_ my ass, and you know how important the state of my ass is to me.”

“We’ll all be fine,” Laurel pipes up, glancing over at Michaela. She looks better, this morning; still shaken, but just about as close to _okay_ as Laurel supposes any of them can be, with Philip watching their every move. “We’ll all just go home tonight. Lock our windows and doors and keep an eye out for anything suspicious.”

“Sounds like a plan,” Michaela mutters, gripping her pillow in one hand and her purse in the other, and not looking very enthusiastic about reemerging into the real world. “Here’s to not getting murdered in our sleep.”

They don’t hang around much longer. After thanking Asher for being a surprisingly good host, Laurel hops into her car, with Michaela sitting shotgun, while Asher chooses to pile in with Connor and Oliver, having thankfully changed out of his onesie and into normal clothes. They endure most of the ride in silence, save for Michaela dialing idly through her radio for a few minutes, and Laurel drops her off near one of her classes on campus before driving to her own.

The rest of the day passes by relatively uneventfully, by her standards. She spends it looking over her shoulder a bit more than she usually does and calling Wes almost fifty times, only to have his deceptively chipper-sounding voicemail answer each one. She worries herself sick over him, and half breaks down in Annalise’s office trying to get her to do the same, talk to him, do _something_ , though she can’t be sure if it accomplishes much of anything. Frank pulls her down into the basement and tells her that he loves her, and she feels so sick and confused and hurt when she looks at him that all she has the energy to do is push him away.

She won’t tell the others, not about Lila, not about any of it. It’d break them, after what they did to Sam. She’ll bear it so they don’t have to, and she can. She’ll be all right.

Give her time, and she’ll be all right. She always is.

Laurel heads home at the end of the day with a headache brewing behind her eyes, surveying the dark hallway of her floor and keeping a hand on her pepper spray keychain. Thankfully, she makes it inside her apartment without incident, locking the door and sliding the chain into its track for good measure, then tosses her purse down onto her couch. She feels filthy, exhausted, her neck aching from sleeping on Asher’s couch, and she’s just about to go for the shower when, across the room on the counter, she notices her phone light up.

Her head jumps into her throat, assuming that it must be Wes – or Philip, maybe, with another email – but when she strides over, she finds Michaela’s name there instead, with a simple:

- _Can I come over?_


	3. III

Michaela feels stupid, for a variety of reasons.

She feels stupid for being as scared of Philip as she is. She feels stupid for triple-checking every lock in her apartment, and stupid for pushing her couch halfway in front of her door to barricade herself in – which won’t work if Philip happens to choose a window, and she may have just screwed _herself_ instead. She feels stupid for being paranoid, like a little kid terrified of things that go bump in the night, spooked by her own shadow. She feels stupid for trying to keep her eyes open in the shower, lest she open them and find Philip’s silhouette on the other side of the curtain. And she feels pretty damn stupid when she gets shampoo in them because of that.

But when she finally breaks, and texts Laurel, and asks to come over, she feels infinitely stupider.

She doesn’t know why she does it. Well – she _does_ know. As much as she doesn’t want to let anyone see her like this, weak and pathetic, she doesn’t want to be alone tonight even more. She considers texting Connor, but knows he and Oliver are almost certainly having marathon sex after having to keep their hands to themselves the night before, and third-wheeling is a level she’s promised herself she’ll never stoop to. He wouldn’t want her there, anyway. He _has_ someone. She?

She… has no one. And she’s never been more aware of that fact.

So she texts Laurel; a brief _Can I come over?_ She sure as hell is not about to text Asher or Wes. She can’t text Caleb; Caleb can’t know Philip is back, and she doesn’t really want to see him right now, anyway, when being with him just feels like work, always with some dark, sinister elephant in the room between them.

A minute later, her phone pings with Laurel’s reply.

- _Are you okay?_

She thinks for a moment, before tapping out an answer.

- _I don’t want to be alone tonight_

There’s not much of a point in lying, she figures, and with Connor trying to hightail it out of town, Wes going crazy, and Asher being… Asher, Laurel is starting to seem more and more like her best option for an ally, in all this chaos. Maybe even a friend. _We’re not friends_ , Laurel had said, so long ago, and Michaela can’t help but wonder if that isn’t exactly true anymore.

Another minute ticks by. Then:

- _Okay_

_-You have my address?_

Michaela breathes a sigh of relief.

- _Yeah. Be there in ten_

She packs her things quickly: the same pillow and blanket from last night, and a simple overnight bag with a change of clothes, toiletries, and something to sleep in. She manages to shove the couch away from the door, and scurries down to the street, calling an Uber and praying to God that when she steps inside, she won’t find herself staring into Philip’s pale face and empty eyes. Luckily, since her life hasn’t totally morphed into a bad horror movie yet, she’s spared that fate, and she arrives at Laurel’s around half past eleven, glancing over her shoulder about a dozen times as she knocks on her door and waits for it to open.

After a second, it does. Light floods the hallway, and Laurel appears before her, dressed in an oversized sweatshirt and shorts, her hair damp from showering and loose around her shoulders. Michaela’s can’t help but suddenly feel a little ridiculous, like she’s regressed back to high school, showing up at her friend’s house for a sleepover with her pillow and blanket in hand.

“Hi,” she greets, the sight of Laurel making her relax, slightly. “Sorry, I, um… I just-”

The other girl steps aside. “Don’t worry about it. Come in.”

She does, following Laurel inside and closing the door behind her. As soon as she does, Michaela finds herself taking a look around her apartment, almost without realizing it, cataloguing each item with analytical eyes and taking inventory. She’s never seen the inside of Laurel’s place before, not once, but judging by the hints Laurel has dropped here and there about her family’s money, and the address, which she had known was in an expensive-as-hell apartment complex not far from campus, she’d expected it to be nice.

And it _is_ nice. Furnished simply, with paintings here and there on the plain white walls of her living room, decorative potted plants in the corners, immaculately clean white furniture she can tell couldn’t have been cheap, and beige carpeting. There’s a little kitchenette with hardwood flooring to her left, a nook for the table and chairs next to that, and the living area off in the corner, with a flat-screen television and cream-colored upholstered couch. Most of the place is neat, though there are blankets and shoes and papers strewn here and there, like clearly she hadn’t been expecting company.

It’s at least two times bigger than her tiny place, and it’s clear that it’s expensive, but nothing about it, not one single thing, could be called ostentatious. Laurel has all the necessities – and trust her, they are _very nice_ necessities, from very nice brands she recognizes – and not much beyond that. Somehow, it surprises Michaela and it doesn’t, because it’s a nice place and it comes from money but it’s also unassuming, and it suits Laurel better than she would’ve imagined.

She doesn’t see any family pictures, though. She wonders what that means, why Laurel would rather stow them in drawers than put them out to see.

“Nice place,” Michaela mutters, as she takes off her shoes and leaves them by the door, along with her pillow and bag.

Laurel makes a sound of agreement and slides the security chain into its track. “Thanks.”

“Sorry,” she says again, coming to a stop in the middle of the room, not knowing what to do with herself. “I didn’t want to be alone tonight, with Philip-”

“It’s fine. And… honestly, I didn’t really want to either, but I wasn’t about to sleep on Asher’s couch again, because it smelled like beer, farts, and Chipotle.”

That’s the truth if she’s ever heard it, and Michaela chortles. “Well, hopefully you’ll be a better host. But at least Asher did make us pizza bites when we came over.”

“Oh, _okay_. I see how it is.” Laurel raises an eyebrow, making her way into the kitchen. “So first you ask me to take you in under my roof to keep you from getting murdered and/or kidnapped, and now you’re demanding I feed you too?”

Michaela follows, taking a seat at one of the stools in front of the counter and feigning seriousness. “Please. After all we’ve been through, are you really going to let your guest starve?”

“Fine,” Laurel relents, and reaches for her phone. “But we’re ordering Chinese from Little Shanghai, that’s not up for debate. And you’re paying for your half.”

“Delivery?”

Laurel scoffs, and starts to dial. “Of course. You think I’m picking up with a stalker out on the loose?”

They order, and within the hour their food is at Laurel’s doorstep, piping hot in four little cartons. They eat on the couch, curled up with blankets pulled over their legs, while an old rerun of Friends plays quietly in the background. Michaela doesn’t mind; she likes Friends well enough. Add in a pinch of murder and a dash of deceit, and she figures their twisted little clique might as well be living in New York City spending their days solving murder cases out of Central Perk.

“Well,” Laurel observes, in between bites of orange chicken, “if this is my last meal, at least I’m not going to die on an empty stomach.”

“Are you even really scared?” Michaela asks, more pointedly than she’d intended. “You don’t seem like you are.”

Laurel pauses, chewing her food for a moment in contemplation. “Yeah. I am. I’d be stupid not to be.”

“Why not go to Frank’s then?” she asks, off-handedly. “I mean, whatever you two are fighting about can’t be as life-or-death as a stalker trying to kill us all. And I’m pretty sure he’d take out Philip in a second if it meant protecting you.”

For a long moment, Laurel is silent – so long that Michaela realizes quickly she’s said something wrong. She looks paler, more drawn, lips pursed so tight that creases form in her forehead, and it’s a while before she speaks, again.

“Can we talk about something else?”

Something about Laurel – the way even the mere _mention_ of Frank’s name makes her recoil, makes her tuck her knees in tighter against her chest – stops Michaela from pressing. Instead she just nods and chews for a moment, a semi-awkward silence filling the air.

“I think Connor’s really serious,” Michaela finally says, changing the subject. “About leaving.”

“I don’t blame him. Middleton must have the most homicides per capita of any college campus in the nation.” Laurel pokes at her chicken idly, sighing. “I thought about transferring, too. I don’t know where. Anywhere.”

“Why haven’t you?”

“I don’t know,” is all she says, and Michaela can tell she’s being honest, that she really doesn’t have a clue. “I’m already here. And I’m sure… things can only get better from here on out, right? I mean, if this isn’t rock bottom, what is?”

She scoffs. “I admire your optimism.”

Laurel grins, a bit ruefully. “I’m not optimistic.”

“Well, as long as we’re talking optimism here, worst comes to worst?” Michaela says, setting aside her empty carton on the coffee table and tossing her chopsticks into it. “We turn ourselves in. Take plea deals. Get five years or so, for Sam and Sinclair. Get released when we’re thirty – maybe earlier, for good behavior. Or overcrowding.”

“I’m pretty sure if it came down to it, the state of Pennsylvania would find some way to cram my 120-pound ass into one of their cells.”

Michaela shrugs and lies back against a pillow. “If we’re still talking optimism, maybe prison wouldn’t be so bad.”

“I’m sure it’s not as much fun as it looks on _Orange is the New Black,_ if that’s where you’re getting your ideas about prison from.”

“Fine. Then, most optimistically, we turn ourselves in, we get charged, we get good lawyers, and we walk. Get off scot-free. And we wouldn’t have to keep lying, sneaking around …” She drifts off, rubbing her lips together. “We’d be free, finally.”

Laurel just grins, again, and for a moment she doesn’t speak. She just fiddles with her chopsticks, not making eye contact, looking almost like she’s remembering something – how she used to be, maybe, back when she _was_ free. Michaela can remember that too, because maybe they’re not technically in jail now, but the cage they keep themselves locked up in, this hell they’ve constructed for themselves, with all the secrets and the lies…

It’s not a jail, but it sure as hell has started to feel like one.

“I think that’s enough optimism for one night,” Laurel finally remarks, and gets to her feet with a yawn. “I’m gonna head to bed. You good?”

Michaela nods, but the instant she does, that persistent, aching little crick in her neck makes her wince. She reaches back, rubbing it for a moment, then nodding her head.

“Yeah. I’m fine. My neck’s just still killing me from sleeping on Asher’s couch last night.”

“We can just share my bed then,” Laurel proposes, straight-faced. Michaela blinks, her mouth dropping open wordlessly. “It’s fine, Michaela. It’s big enough for two. And it’s a lot more comfy than the couch.”

“I…” she drifts off, on the brink of refusing, but Laurel doesn’t seem like she’s about to take no for an answer.

“Come on. I’ll get some extra blankets. And besides, it’s probably better we sleep in the same room anyway, in case Philip tries to kidnap you for ransom or something.”

Still more than a little unsure of this proposed sleeping arrangement, Michaela frowns, but stands nonetheless, following her down the hallway and stopping behind Laurel when she reaches into a nearby linen closet.

“Like anyone would pay my ransom anyway,” she mutters under her breath, and she isn’t exaggerating; she can’t think of a single person who would fork over any considerable amount of cash to save her.

Most would probably just say good riddance.

“I would,” Laurel chirps, still facing the closet as she rummages. Finally, she seems to find what she’s looking for, and turns back to Michaela, holding out a pile of colorful patchwork quilts. “I’m sure my parents wouldn’t notice if a measly one mil suddenly went missing.”

Michaela is about to ask if she’s kidding – because she really doesn’t look like she is – when Laurel nods down at the quilts, then turns to head to the bedroom. “Old quilts. Stitched with love from my _abuela_.”

Michaela doesn’t say anything. She just follows, a bit awkwardly, as Laurel leads her to the bedroom and steps inside. It’s furnished just like the rest of her apartment, sparse but tasteful and elegant, the queen-sized bed made neatly, sheets white and crisp. Laurel heads off to the bathroom straightaway, while she hangs back with the quilts still folded in her arms, once more not sure quite what to do with herself. Finally, she settles on resting them on the bed and going to retrieve her bag from by the door, and by the time she returns Laurel has set about tossing the quilts over the bed, though her wingspan is too small to get them to fan out properly, and it’s almost comical seeing her try to reach across the bed to smooth the covers down. She chuckles lowly before she can help it, and Laurel hears, glaring at her mock-seriously.

“Y’know, the least you could do is help.”

So Michaela does, circling around the bed and helping on the opposite side. And for the first time since this whole Philip debacle began, she feels… lighter. Her entire body, her entire soul, feels relieved of some burden, because being with Laurel like this is comforting, in a way she never would’ve imagined it could be. She’s never known Laurel – not really, and even now, she probably still doesn’t, really, but she feels like she’s learned more about the other girl in the span of a few hours tonight than she has all year working for Annalise, and that feels like a good thing.

Yeah. A good thing.

Laurel disappears into the bathroom for a few minutes after they make the bed, and reemerges in sweatpants and a loose t-shirt with some slogan about saving the orcas, or something. Michaela, having changed into her sleepwear by then too, can’t help but notice and remark on it, half-jokingly.

“So. You’re a bleeding-heart animal lover too, I see.”

Laurel just shrugs and pulls back the covers, setting her phone down on the nightstand beside her. “Mmm. I like animals.”

Clearly not in the mood to talk much now, Laurel doesn’t elaborate. At this hour, Michaela doesn’t have the energy to ask her to, and so she just crawls into bed too, reaching over to switch off the lamp on the nightstand and bathing the room in darkness, except for the silver streaks of moonlight that filter in through the blinds.

“No kicking, got it?” comes from Laurel’s side of the bed, teasingly.

Michaela rolls her eyes, then rolls over onto her side so that her back is facing her.

“No promises.”

They lay there in silence, for a while. Michaela tries to close her eyes and sleep, but her head is swimming, her systems too wide awake to boot down, and so she just stares blankly into the grey, fuzzy stillness of the room instead, curled up underneath the quilts that smell faintly like mothballs. She’s acutely aware of how weird this is: sharing a bed with a girl who, last week, she probably wouldn’t have even called a friend.

Neither of them have said a word in more than fifteen minutes, not a goodnight, not anything. For all Michaela knows Laurel is fast asleep next to her, but she has the sense, somehow, that she isn’t, that she’s just as awake as her. She should try to appreciate the silence, Michaela knows, but words bubble up in her throat before she can help it, and she rolls over, sitting up and looking over at Laurel’s slender form beneath the blankets, so much smaller than she normally looks.

“I’m sorry,” she mutters. Laurel rolls over, furrows her brow in confusion. “For before. Everything. I know I haven’t always been nice to you.”

Laurel smiles, sleepily. “You mean, like when you insisted on calling me Lauren for a month despite the fact that you knew my actual name?”

“That,” she acknowledges, feeling guilty. “The ring, too. You were just trying to watch out for all of us, and I-”

“Hey,” Laurel soothes, tucking her hands under her cheek. “We already danced that one out, remember? We’re good.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah,” the other girl affirms, then rolls back over and yawns, her dark hair fanning out on the pillow. “Now go to sleep. And if you kick me, you end up on the floor.”

Michaela scoffs and lies back down, rolling over as well. “Sweet dreams to you too.”

There’s just silence, for a minute, then two. Then three. Then so many that Michaela starts to drift, and just as she’s starting to cross over into that hazy penumbra between slumber and consciousness-

“Sweet dreams, _princesa_ ,” floats across from the other side of the bed, softly-spoken, barely a whisper. Michaela thinks she can hear a smile in Laurel’s voice.


	4. IV

As it turns out, for someone seemingly so high maintenance, Michaela Pratt is actually a relatively unobtrusive houseguest.

As the week goes by, their sleepovers become regular, unspoken occurrences. They never agree on them; Michaela just shows up on Laurel’s doorstep, pillow and bag in hand, always at the same time every night. Michaela does, however, nix the bed-sharing thing pretty quickly, uncomfortable with it for some reason Laurel can’t decipher, and takes up residence on the couch instead.

Laurel doesn’t mind. As long as there’s a psycho-killer out on the loose after them, she doesn’t want to be alone at night just as much as Michaela – and she doesn’t mind the other girl’s presence. Sure, she’d be the first to admit that she’s never really liked Michaela all that much, but there’s something… different, about her now. Laurel doesn’t know what it is. But she’s softer. Smaller, than she’d looked before. She has no barbed, verbal jabs always at the ready to spit at the slightest provocation. Laurel even finds out that she has a pretty decent sense of humor.

And slowly, very slowly, she realizes that she kind of likes having her there.

She doesn’t have many friends, and she knows it; between school and the bi-monthly homicides, Laurel barely has enough time to devote to staying sane, let alone making friends outside of the office. Wes is her friend, sure, but after the Annalise and his mom fiasco he’s been flaky, avoiding her and ignoring her calls. She’s not sure if Frank had ever really been her friend. They’d shared a bed, talked, knew each other’s darkest secrets and deepest desires, but it was rooted in something other than friendship, and it’d never felt easy or lighthearted or _carefree_.

But Michaela… Michaela is different. Being with Michaela feels like the possibility of friendship, one day.

“So now that we’re pretty much living together,” Laurel remarks jokingly, one evening as she stands at the sink, washing the dinner dishes, “are we officially friends? Is _Michaela Pratt_ my new BFF?”

“In your dreams,” Michaela says from her spot at the counter, only half-seriously. “As soon as Philip is behind bars I’ll be back sleeping in my own bed, thank you very much.”

“So… we’re _not_ friends? Is that what you’re saying?” Laurel pries, and it sounds like a joke but she actually wants to know, wants to gauge, for some reason, exactly where they stand.

Michaela rolls her eyes. “If I say yes, can we stop having this conversation?”

“Are you saying yes?”

“ _No_.”

“Mmm hmm,” Laurel hums, disbelieving. “Well, we are. We’re friends now.”

The other girl scoffs. “Excuse me? That’s not how it works. You don’t just… _decide_ that you’re my friend. You need my approval. Explicit consent.”

“I need explicit consent to call myself your friend? Spoken like a true lawyer.” Laurel grins, and reaches for the sponge, then glances back over her shoulder briefly. “Do you want me to have you check a box ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ or can we do a verbal agreement?”

Michaela just rolls her eyes again, doesn’t answer, and strides off down the hall into the bathroom, but the eye-roll is good-natured, and a little grin is tugging at her lips – and Laurel knows they’re friends, right then. Whether Michaela likes it or not.

So. Living with Michaela is all right; nice, even, so that neither of them are alone with Philip at large. And they’re friends. _And_ it’s mutually beneficial.

It does, however, bring about some unforeseen complications.  

Such as? She’s not used to living with someone. Hasn’t since undergrad, back at Brown. Subsequently, she’s not used to someone else going about their day where she lives. Doing their own things. _Existing_ , in the same space as her.

And she’s _really_ not used to getting home one evening, walking inside her apartment, making her way down the hall, and accidentally catching a glimpse of a buck naked Michaela through the crack of the open bathroom door.

Michaela doesn’t have a key, but she’s taken to using the spare one hidden out front in a loose floorboard beneath Laurel’s doorstep, whenever she needs to get in and Laurel isn’t around. Apparently having assumed she’d be home alone long enough to shower and dress in peace, she’d propped open the bathroom door slightly, affording Laurel a clear line of sight to where she stands in front of the fogged-up mirror, running a comb through the wet strands of her hair, with no towel wrapped around herself.

With no _nothing_ wrapped around herself.

Laurel’s first instinct is to avert her eyes – but that instinct fails, miserably, falls flat on its face and combusts. Her next instinct is, inexplicably – or maybe completely _ex_ plicably – to stare. Shamelessly, like some kind of voyeur. She’s mesmerized, frozen in place, taking in every gentle, immaculate curve of Michaela’s body; from her hips, to her long legs, to her ass, to her pert, round breasts, with water droplets still clinging to them. She looks like a vision, with dark skin that seems almost to glow beneath the bright fluorescent lights, a head of wet hair that drips down her back, plump lips that are parted slightly in concentration as she picks at a tangle in her hair.

God. _God_. She should really not be staring. Laurel knows this. She should most definitely not be ogling an unsuspecting Michaela Pratt. This is wrong on about a hundred different levels, and if Michaela caught her she’s sure she’d be slapped with a restraining order so hard her grandkids would feel it, but she can’t tear her eyes away. She’s never seen a body, a girl, so perfect, so… _beautiful_. She doesn’t think Michaela has a single flaw anywhere on her; her skin is a smooth, unsullied field, with no scars, birthmarks, anything. She’s always given off an air of being perfect, unattainable. Laurel had always kind of thought it was a bluff – and it _is_ , maybe, but… she _is_ perfect.

And equally unattainable.

Michaela moves, just then. Reaches for something on the counter, and the sudden movement spooks Laurel so much that she goes skittering away like an insect under a rock, hurrying into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.

She’s sweating. She needs a cold shower – or ten.

 

~

 

On Thursday, the others finally find out about their cohabitation of convenience.

Which is what Laurel’s calling it from now on, especially after the bathroom incident. Just convenience. Practicality. The more logical it is, the easier she can forget about that unsavory – and, admittedly, _very_ savory – little occurrence in the bathroom.

It happens in the morning, when they both arrive at the office fifteen minutes late – because of traffic, though Michaela had yelled and grumbled at Laurel so much during the commute that she had actually sort of started to believe _she_ had somehow done something wrong – and rush inside the office in the middle of a briefing about their new case, out of breath with wild, wind-blown hair. Laurel isn’t sure how Annalise has time to think about other cases with their world revolving around Philip and the Hapstall’s almost constantly, but she takes a seat on the couch nonetheless, ignoring Frank’s and everyone else’s questioning looks and Annalise’s sneered, “Miss Pratt and Miss Castillo. How nice of you to join us today.”

“All right,” Connor confronts them, as soon as Annalise has called Bonnie and Frank into her office and disappeared. “What’s going on with you two that we don’t know about? You’ve been showing up together every day this week. Are you suddenly besties now?”

Laurel notices Wes and Asher listen up at that, and they lean forward towards them too. Michaela sends her a look as if asking her to _please_ , say something first, and so Laurel sighs, not seeing much of a point in beating around the bush.

“She’s been staying at my place. We both just feel safer not being alone at night, with Philip out there and everything.”

Wes frowns, confused. “Why didn’t you just… tell us that?”

Laurel shrugs, half-surprised to hear him address her. “It never came up. And it’s not like it really matters.”

Asher throws up his hands, looking offended. “ _Not like it matters_? Bro, there’s been a smoking hot girl-on-girl slumber party going on all week, and I’ve been missing it!”

“Yeah. Real _smoking hot_ ,” Michaela deadpans. “We get dinner delivered and triple check every lock in the apartment and then go to bed fearing for our lives. You’re really missing out.”

“Well, that’s not _nearly_ as exciting as I was hoping it would be,” Connor remarks, and slumps back in his armchair. “Watch out though, for real. Michaela has driven every roommate she’s ever had batshit crazy. She’s told me the stories.”

Laurel relaxes, grinning. “Oh yeah?”

Michaela scowls. “That is _not_ true.”

“Totally is,” Connor continues, facing Laurel and ignoring the increasingly indignant Michaela. “She went through four roommates in her dorm room freshmen year of undergrad. They kept moving out because none of them could stand living with her.”

Laurel chortles. “And the fifth?”

Michaela lowers her eyes. “There _was_ no fifth. The RA finally gave up and let me have my own room.”

That even gets Wes to smile a bit, albeit distantly, and everyone else laughs except Michaela who is still seething, with steam practically coming out of her ears. Sensing her frustration, Laurel sits up, looking at her.

“Yeah, well,” she says, eyes softening. “She’s not that bad so far.”

Michaela’s eyes flick up to meet hers, the ghost of a grateful smile on her lips.

“Oh, trust me. Every roommate seems nice for the first week. It’s a grace period,” Connor replies. “ _Then_ they turn into nightmares.”

“Then hopefully this Philip thing just lasts one week and not a day more,” Laurel tells him. “It’s… safety in numbers. The buddy system. We should all do it.”

“ _I_ already have a buddy,” Connor says. “And his name is Oliver. So I’ll opt out.”

“I need a buddy then!” Asher chimes in, glancing at Wes and nudging him with his elbow. “Hey. What do ya say? Sleepover buddies to stay safe from Mr. Albino-Killer? I got hella pizza bites and one _pimped_ safe house.”

Wes frowns, thinks for a moment, before getting to his feet and muttering, “I, uh, I’m good, actually. Thanks, though.”

Laurel watches him slink away into the kitchen with a frown, all hunched in on himself like he’s trying to disappear into thin air. She considers following him, for a moment, but knows it’s hopeless; he’s all but convinced himself his mother’s blood is on his hands, and there’s no one except maybe Annalise who can talk any sense into him, now – but she won’t, or if she will, she’s sure taking her sweet time doing it. And she cares about Wes, always has and always will, but she’s exhausted, worn down. Can barely handle the shitstorm that is her own life, let alone anyone else’s.

So she lets him walk away, for what is maybe the first time since all this started. She lets him go, head and heart heavy, and she doesn’t follow.

 

~

 

Two days pass without anything from Philip – no emails, no videos, no nothing. Then three. Laurel starts to relax, if only ever so slightly. She knows better than to let her guard down completely, but maybe – just maybe, she thinks – the worst is over.

It isn’t. And she finds that out the hard way one night, when she’s awakened from a deep, blessedly dreamless sleep by Michaela frantically shaking her shoulder.

“Laurel. _Laurel_!”

Her voice is a hiss, low and urgent and wavering with panic. Confused, Laurel opens her eyes, rolls over, and gives a soft sound of irritation.

“What?”

She pauses, the moment she gets a good look at Michaela’s face. It’s hard to make out her features through the darkness, but she can see the whites of her eyes in the moonlight, wide and terrified, and can feel the way her hand subtly shakes where she has it placed on her shoulder, can hear the raggedness of her breath.

“I-I heard something. Outside,” she whispers shakily. “The door – someone’s-”

Laurel sits up, blinking a few times. “It’s okay. It was probably just a nightmare, all right?”

But Michaela shakes her head, convinced.

“No. I-it _wasn’t_. I-”

A faint sound, coming from down the hallway, makes Laurel freeze. Her ears perk up, zeroing in on the sound and waiting for it to repeat – and when it does, she hears it, clear as anything.

The faintest _rattle rattle_.

Initially, she tries to rationalize it, her brain firing in all directions. It’s an old building; it’s just the house settling, like her nanny used to say. Creaking. The wood is ancient. It’s nothing. Or it’s her asshole neighbors upstairs who always seem to love throwing ragers the night before she has an exam. But then it happens again – _rattle rattle_ , the sound quiet but impossible to miss, sounding more sinister than anything she’s ever heard before in her life. At that, Laurel finally peels back her covers and tiptoes closer to her bedroom door, leaning just outside to wait for the sound again.

That’s when she hears the light scraping of metal against metal instead. Something sliding into the lock.

“Oh my God,” Michaela whimpers, backing away from the door and covering her mouth with her hands. “Oh my God, _oh my God_ , we didn’t… the chain, Laurel. W-w-what do we do?”

She’s right; they’d forgotten the chain, careless in their false sense of security. Laurel swears under her breath, feeling her forehead break out into a sweat, but she stays composed otherwise, her blood cold as ever in her veins. Her mind boots down into that half-mechanical crisis state she’s used so many times recently, and Laurel takes a deep breath, rushing over to her nightstand like a heat-seeking missile and yanking open the bottom drawer.

“This is what we do,” she breathes, and reaches in to withdraw the pistol stowed there.


	5. V

For once, Michaela is grateful for her insomnia.

Without it she wouldn’t have heard the sound – the quiet _rattle rattle_ , preceded by an even quieter thudding of footsteps outside the door, signaling someone’s approach. She wouldn’t have heard it, nor would she have sprung up from the couch immediately, all but tossed off her blankets, and gone scampering into Laurel’s room like a scared little kid, shaking her and hissing her name. She wouldn’t have gotten her up, had her listen to the noise, had her hear the ominous scraping of metal against metal – someone picking the lock.

She also wouldn’t have watched Laurel run over to her nightstand, reach in, and take out a gun.

Michaela freezes the instant she sees it gleam in the moonlight, her stomach going sour. “W-what the _hell_ , Laurel, _what is that_?”

“What does it look like? Now _shh_ ,” Laurel replies, outwardly stoic, but Michaela can hear the tremor in her voice. She goes for the door with the pistol in hand, and though initially Michaela backs away – because God, after Annalise, Laurel should not be anywhere even remotely _near_ a gun – she follows when Laurel strides down the hall, planting herself firmly in front of the door, swallowed up by her big baggy t-shirt and sweatpants.

An army of one; tiny, but not _small_ by any means.

They wait. More scraping. They should’ve called 911, Michaela thinks. The police. Why didn’t they? She thinks about running, briefly, locking herself in the bathroom – that would be smarter, maybe, but she’s not about to leave Laurel, who’s playing all _strong_ and _tough_ when really she’s quivering like a reed in a gale.  

More scraping. One click. Two. Then-

The door opens, with a long, high-pitched _creaaaaaaak_.  

No one comes in, at first. Michaela can’t even see anyone moving in the shadows, just pitch-black stillness, and all she can hear is the thudding of her own heartbeat, like it’s about to beat out of her chest, and the sound of the blood pumping in her ears. Doubt flickers in Laurel’s eyes, and she glances back at her, bewildered – just in time for a short, lanky figure to step out of the darkness, emerging like a phantom. Eerily pale skin comes into view, glowing in the moonlight. Empty blue eyes. Red hair.

 _Philip_.

His stride is confident when he first steps in, but when he looks up, and realizes that he is, quite literally, staring down the barrel of a gun, he freezes, every inch of him going rigid with fear.

“Get out,” Laurel hisses, and her voice is low and dangerous – not yelling or screaming, but filled with quiet fury that makes Michaela’s blood run cold in her veins. She’s always known Laurel is dangerous – the quiet one, the most dangerous – but she’s never really seen it for herself until now, how _lethal_ she is, eyes hardened, sharp as steel and twice as cutting.

“Hey. Hear me out,” Philip says, sounding surprisingly harmless. He raises his hands, and they’re empty – no gun, no knife, no nothing. Michaela furrows her brow at the sight. “Put down the gun.”

“Like hell I will,” Laurel fires back. “I already called 911. The police are on their way. Get _out_.”

Philip shakes his head, looking, for a moment, as though considering something. Then, without warning, he pivots towards Laurel, like he’s about to try to make a move to take her down, but she steps back, quick and agile as a feline, and cocks the gun with a low _click_.

“ _Stop_. Don’t… don’t move, again, or I shoot,” Laurel orders, and Philip, wide-eyed, obeys.

Michaela gulps. Somehow, maybe a bit irrationally, she’d been doubting if Laurel even really knew how to shoot that thing, if it was just a bluff. Now?

Now… it’s clear she does; she’s ready, aimed, and loaded, and dangerous as ever, and she _will_. She’d shot Annalise and Michaela can’t think of a single thing stopping her from shooting Philip now, and so she reaches out, curling an arm around Laurel’s middle from behind. She doesn’t know what she’s trying to do – calm Laurel down, hold her back, cling to her for comfort – but the instant she does she feels some of the tension flow out of her, her shoulders sagging at the tiny bit of warm, human contact. _Calm down_ , she wants to tell her, wants to beg. _Don’t shoot. Please. I don’t want to see anyone else die_ – but she keeps her mouth shut, lets Laurel do the talking. For once, she has the good sense not to interfere, not to undermine her now.

“You gotta listen to me,” Philip tries again, growing desperate. “I didn’t… I-I didn’t kill them. The Hapstall’s. I swear-”

“Get out,” Laurel orders again. When Philip doesn’t move, just shakes his head, she raises the gun and raises her voice, to a volume Michaela’s never heard her use before. “ _Get out_!”

The words are so sharp and shrill that they make even Michaela flinch. Philip looks like he’s all of two seconds away from crapping his pants, knees shaking, eyes wide; clearly he’d expected them to be easy targets tonight, and if Michaela could laugh right now she would, because Laurel Castillo is anything _but_.

Philip hesitates, a moment longer. Waits, inexplicably, for something – Michaela doesn’t know what, but whatever it is he doesn’t get it, because finally, he starts to back away. He keeps his hands raised above his head, as he makes his way back out the door, vanishing once more into the shadows. Laurel keeps the gun pointed at the doorway for almost a full minute after he’s gone, and it’s only when Michaela hurries over to it and slams it, sliding the chain into place, that she lowers it at last.

It’s then that Michaela sees how hard she’s shaking.

Her hands. Her legs. Her fingers. Her body. Every inch of Laurel seems to vibrate with terror; the strong, unmoving mountain of a girl from only minutes ago crumbles, and she lowers the gun with trembling hands, letting out a breath. Michaela takes a step toward her, cautious. She still has the gun and though she’s pretty sure Laurel doesn’t plan on using it, she looks so shaken that she can’t be sure what she might do.

“Laurel…”

“I…” the other girl mutters, shaking her head. She lets the gun drop to the ground, landing with a dull _thud_. “I-I hate guns.”

 _I hate guns._ Michaela wants to ask why the hell, then, does she have one, but she keeps her mouth shut and reaches down to pick the pistol up instead, holding it out of Laurel’s reach. It feels heavier than she’d expected, so heavy she can’t imagine how Laurel managed to hold it steady.

“Yeah, well, no shit,” she breathes, struggling to make her hands stop shaking too so she can grasp it firmly. “Especially after Annalise – _God_ , Laurel.”

Confusion flickers in Laurel’s eyes for a moment, visible even through the darkness. She doesn’t seem to know what she’s talking about – and Michaela has no clue how, because she’s fairly certain if she shot someone and _almost killed them_ , she’d sure as fuck remember it. But then something like understanding floods Laurel’s eyes, and she nods, sucks in a breath to steady herself.

“Yeah, I, uh…” Laurel shakes her head. “Sorry.”

Michaela glances back down to the gun. “Now how do I… H-how do I take the bullets out? Or turn it off?”

Laurel doesn’t answer. She just takes the gun from her without a word and flips something on it, then nods. “There. Safety’s on.”

“Good,” Michaela pants, still unable to catch her breath, and grabs it from her before she can protest. “Now… I’m keeping this away from you. Do _not_ touch it again, got it?”

Laurel nods, wiping off her mouth with one hand. “Okay. I… okay.”

They’re silent, for a moment. Michaela waits, and she’s not entirely sure what for; for Laurel to do something, maybe, or tell _her_ what to do. Take the lead. Laurel is the one who always keeps a level head in situations like this, stays calm, switches her brain off – and she may not be having a panic attack or sobbing outright, but Michaela can tell something is wrong, very wrong; the gun, Philip… it’d triggered something inside her, shaken her, made her shut down. So she sets the gun aside and sits Laurel down, who is now staring ahead of her with distance in her eyes, like she’s looking at something a million miles away, her mind in another dimension entirely.

“It’s okay,” she soothes, reaching for her phone. “I’m calling 911, and we… we need to warn the others too. In case-”

“Philip comes after them too,” Laurel finishes for her, coming back to herself ever so slightly, and nods. “Right.”

They dial hastily. The police. The others.

They dial. They breathe. They wait.

 

~

 

The officers drive them down to the police station in their pajamas.

Normally Michaela would’ve put some effort into making herself presentable, but she’s not about to leave Laurel alone for more than a minute, especially since her eyes have taken on that eerie blank hollowness to them, her shoulders slumped – and so she doesn’t. She sits with her in silence on the couch until the police arrive, assuring her over and over that everything will be all right, those same, empty words that mean nothing, that are the only comfort she can offer. Neither Wes nor Annalise had picked up though they’d called a dozen times, and she doesn’t think Laurel cares very much about Annalise, but she can tell she’s making herself sick with worry over Wes. She doesn’t know why. Doesn’t particularly care to know why, right this minute.

All she knows is that _Laurel_ cares, and though she’ll never admit it, not until her dying day… She cares about Laurel.

The officers take their statements, before sitting them down in the lobby and telling them to wait while the statements are processed. Michaela doesn’t know how two pieces of paper need much processing, but she doesn’t have the energy to ask; she just takes a seat beside Laurel in one of the uncomfortable plastic chairs in the lobby, sipping at a Styrofoam cup of shitty coffee from the station’s coffee pot and huddling under the blanket one of the female officers had given them. It’s almost two AM; the station is a flurry of activity, with drunken disorderlies and disgruntled officers aplenty, but it fades into the background like white noise to Michaela, distant and muffled.

She doesn’t say anything to Laurel, not at first. Every so often she glances over at the other girl, only to find her with the same look on her face: drawn, paler than usual, all the color drained from her cheeks, her eyes bleary and unfocused. She’s wrapped in a blanket too, and looks like she wants nothing more than to curl up and do some disappearing act inside it. 

“Hey,” she murmurs, finally. “You okay?”

Laurel nods, takes a sip of her coffee. “Yeah.”

“You sure?”

A pause.

“No.”

The answer is simple and honest. Michaela presses her lips together into a grim line.

“Why do you own a gun, Laurel?” she asks.

Laurel doesn’t answer, for a minute. Then, she sighs, staring down into her cup as the steam rises in her face. “If you knew who my dad is…”

She stops there. Michaela frowns.

“That’s not an answer.”

“Fine,” Laurel exhales sharply, looking over at her. “He’s a bad person. The worst, kind of person. And he has enemies, people worse than him. People who could use me, to get to him. So that’s why I own a gun, okay? I don’t like it.”

“But you said, the night Annalise got shot, that you’d never shot a gun before,” Michaela says, narrowing her eyes. “And you had. Why’d you lie about that?”

“I, uh, I don’t know,” she murmurs, and there’s something in her eyes that Michaela can’t quite place, almost like she’s trying to come up with an excuse, grasping at straws. “I was freaking out, I guess. Just… saying things.”

“Did you _mean_ to shoot her there, then? In the stomach, instead of the leg? Did you-”

Laurel shushes her, glancing around furtively. “We can’t talk about this here.”

Michaela shuts up, knowing she’s probably right, and leans back in her chair, taking another sip of the cheap coffee and cringing when it hits her tongue.  

“Are _you_ okay?” Laurel asks, stirring her from her thoughts.

“You even need to ask?” Michaela chuckles darkly. “I mean, I thought something would happen eventually. I just – I don’t know. Didn’t expect it to be like that – and he didn’t even have a _weapon_ , Laurel. He didn’t come there to murder us. Do you think maybe he was telling the truth? That he didn’t kill them?”

“I don’t know,” the other girl answers, downing the rest of her coffee, shaking her head. “But whatever. You should learn to shoot a gun too, by the way. It couldn’t hurt, with all the murder these days.”

Michaela scoffs, but lets her features relax back into a grin. “Not happening.”

“Mmm. You’re probably right. Giving you a gun might kill us all faster than any psycho-stalker ever could.”

Michaela fake glowers, nudging Laurel’s foot lightly with hers. “Hey.”

“Well, it could be worse,” Laurel concedes. “Look on the bright side. We could be dead. Or tied up in Philip’s basement slash torture chamber. Least we made it out alive. And…” She drifts off, meeting her eyes almost timidly. “I’m glad you were there.”

That gets Michaela to crack a grin; tiny, shaky, but real – because she’s glad she was there, too. Immeasurably so.

Because God help her, maybe – and it is a _strong_ maybe – Laurel Castillo has started growing on her just the tiniest bit.

“Yeah. Me too.”


	6. VI

As soon as they set foot inside the office the next morning, they’re bombarded with a thousand questions at once, from what feels like a thousand different people.

Frank is upon her first, asking if she’s okay, eyes wide with panic, taking her in from head to toe as if to check for any injuries. Laurel’s never seen him look so scared before in her life, but she assures him she’s fine, only semi-coldly, and brushes past him into the living room, where Asher, Connor, and Bonnie are pacing around, looking just as nervous. Connor pops up from his chair the instant he sees them enter and goes to Michaela, who shrugs him off as well and takes a seat on the couch, sinking down like a lead weight.

“Where’s Wes?” Laurel asks, taking a look around and noting his absence. “Annalise?”

“Annalise was attacked, last night. She’s still down at the station,” Bonnie answers. “Philip broke into Wes’s apartment too-”

Laurel’s heart shoots into her throat. “Is he okay?”

“He’s fine,” Bonnie assures her. “He wasn’t there, but Annalise was. She’s not hurt, but she’s shaken up a bit, like you two.”

“You need to be more careful,” Frank tries to tell her. “Stay with me, at my place. Least until all this is over. You’re a hell of a lot safer with me than you are with Prom Queen over here.”

Michaela scoffs. “Excuse me?”

“I don’t need anybody to protect me,” she snaps at him, then takes a look around at the others and shakes her head, not about to let her relationship drama play out in front of all of them. “I’m… fine. We’re both fine.”

“He could’ve kidnapped you. Killed you,” Frank continues. “You saw what he did to the Hapstall’s. This is serious, Laurel-”

“ _I said_ ,” she raises her voice, “I’m fine.”

An awkward silence settles over the room, as the others try to pretend they’re not staring at the two of them, not wanting to interrupt but clearly also not wanting to be anywhere in the vicinity of this argument. Laurel swallows, cheeks burning from embarrassment, and takes a seat in one of the armchairs, waiting for someone to break the silence.

Thankfully Asher, for once, has the good sense to change the subject. “Did he _say_ anything to you guys?”

“He said he didn’t kill them. The Hapstall’s,” Michaela replies. “He just… tried to talk to us. Didn’t even have a weapon.”

“And you believe him?” Connor asks, brow furrowed.

“If he didn’t, who did?” Laurel asks. “It’s the only thing that makes sense: the secret psychotic product of incest who wanted his multi-million dollar inheritance. And it’s not like we have any other suspec-”

The sound of the front door opening, followed by the thumping of footsteps down the hallway, cuts Laurel off. She rises to her feet, along with Michaela and the others, just in time for Annalise, Wes, and Eve, inexplicably, to make their way into the living room, looking a bit haggard and sleep-deprived, but otherwise unscathed, save for a small bandage on Annalise’s arm. They’re flooded with questions just as quickly, and before Laurel can help herself she joins in on the interrogation.

“Finally,” Connor declares, shooting up from the couch.

“You all right?” Frank presses, wide-eyed.

“Why was Philip at Wes’s apartment?” Laurel asks, panicked.

“Did he really punch you?” Asher inquires. Laurel and Michaela roll their eyes in tandem at that.

“Do the cops know where he is?” Michaela breathes, and Eve frowns disapprovingly at the barrage.

“The woman was just attacked; give her a moment before you start the inquisition.”

“I’m not hurt,” Annalise tells them, steadily as ever, then turns to look at Michaela and Laurel. “Miss Pratt, Miss Castillo? Are you all right?”

Michaela nods. “Yeah, uh, yeah, we’re fine. Just kind of… shaken up.”

“How’d you scare him off?” Asher jumps in, looking at them.

Deferring to her automatically, Michaela glances back at Laurel, who is silent for a moment as her brain ticks through her options for a response. She’s not quite sure how the others would react to the news of her owning a gun, especially after what they think she did to Annalise, and so she lets out a breath, the lie slipping off her tongue far too easily, “We fought him off together. Threatened him with a kitchen knife.”

“Whatever you did, it worked,” Annalise says. “And it’s a good thing Laurel wasn’t there alone.”

“But… why Laurel and Wes’s apartments?” Bonnie asks. “Why not the others?”

“Who knows?” Annalise continues. “But nobody is going anywhere by themselves anymore, not until the police have him. We can’t risk it.”

They all nod, solemnly. Eve places a hand behind Annalise’s back and leads her up the stairs to her bedroom, while Wes ambles on in and takes a seat on the couch, ignoring her when she asks about Eve, brushing off the others when they try to pry for information about Philip, and curling up with his head on the armrest to take a nap, in what Laurel thinks looks like the most uncomfortable sleeping position in the world. They sit around for a few minutes, waiting on Annalise. Laurel takes a seat on the armrest next to Wes, trying to prod him and get him to talk, but he just keeps ignoring her, apparently still miffed as he is, and so eventually, she gives up and turns away – just in time for the front door bell to ring, the low chime echoing ominously down the hallway and through the house.

Instinctively, everyone tenses. Wes sits up, frowning. Connor looks half-ready to bolt the moment he deems it necessary. Laurel thinks she even sees Michaela flinch, and she looks to Frank, who hesitates, then goes to answer it, looking prepared to clobber whoever is on the other side.

When he returns with Nate in tow, however, everyone relaxes, concern morphing into confusion.

He doesn’t pay them any mind, turning to Frank. “Annalise here?”

“Upstairs,” Bonnie answers, going for the stairs. “I’ll get her.”

“Why?” Laurel asks, as they listen to the _clack clack clack_ of Bonnie’s heels as she ascends the stairs. “What’s going on?”

Nate pauses for a beat, then lets out a breath and finally acknowledges the rest of them. “Caleb Hapstall’s gone missing.”

Laurel freezes. Her heart sinks, not because of Caleb; really, she couldn’t care less about Caleb, and she’s always gotten a semi-weird vibe from him – but because when she glances over at Michaela, she looks like she’s just been knocked off her feet, her eyes blank as she processes the words. She inhales sharply when she finally does, a look of panic bleeding onto her features, her mouth dropping open, lips trying to form words but failing, over and over.

“H-how did this happen?” she finally asks, voice low, quiet, not shrill or demanding. Michaela stumbles back slightly, sinking down onto the couch’s other armrest just in time for Annalise to reappear at the top of the stairs, trailed by Bonnie and Eve.

“At this stage we’re just gathering information,” Nate tells them dryly.

Michaela shakes her head, anger and shock warring within her. “Why weren’t they watching him though? We… we gave them the videos, they knew Philip was in town-”

“Hey,” Nate interrupts gently, but firmly. “We don’t know anything yet. Don’t jump to any conclusions.”

“About what?” Annalise cuts in, coming to a stop beside him in the doorway.

“This is all your fault,” Michaela breathes, looking up at her and rising to stand, the accusation soft but clear as a bell. “We could’ve warned him.”

Annalise frowns. “Who?”

“Caleb,” Michaela raises her voice slightly. “He’s missing. This… this is…” Her breathing picks up, as she stumbles backwards again, swaying on her feet. “This is all your fault.”

Laurel is at her side in what must be record time, grabbing one of her hands to steady her, placing the other behind her back, and helping her lower herself down onto the couch as she breaks, her breath coming in gasps. She turns toward her once she’s seated, keeping her hand encircled around her wrist as Michaela raises her hands to her face and buries it into them, not wanting the others to see her cry. With her free hand Laurel rubs her back in comforting circles and light pats, as Michaela clings to her like a drowning woman, desperately. Before she can waste another second, Laurel sinks down onto the couch beside her too, squeezing her hand harder, murmuring soothing words in her ear, so intent that she nearly forgets that there are other people in the room.

“Hey,” she coos, as Michaela’s breathing picks up, so fast she can feel the panic thrumming in her bones, muscles, every ligament and tendon. “Hey, Michaela, breathe. It’s okay. You’re okay.”

That tired lie, again. For some reason, it’s all Laurel can think of to say – because Philip has Caleb, the man Michaela maybe kind of loves/cares about, and God only knows when he’s doing to him at this very moment, in whatever torture dungeon he’s got him locked up in. Nothing is okay about this situation. Zip. Zero. Zilch. But then all at once Michaela is leaning into her, resting her head on her shoulder as she sniffles quietly, still holding her hand, still so close she can feel every frantic breath she takes, the heat of her body, and Laurel gulps, her cheeks warming. And Frank is right there, watching them. And Michaela has a boyfriend – technically. And that aforementioned slightly-less-than-technical boyfriend is missing, most likely kidnapped, possibly already dead.

And Laurel feels like the worst, most selfish person in the world for the way her heart won’t quit fluttering.

 

~

 

Not long after Nate leaves, ADA Denver calls and demands they come in for questioning – the icing on top of an already stressful, shitty-ass day.

Luckily, Laurel has become frighteningly used to interrogations, and she breezes through it, lying as easily as she breathes and seeing Denver’s Latino buddy-buddy manipulation for what it is: a crock of bullshit. In another life, she’d probably like ADA Denver well enough. In this one, though, she has half a mind to warn him about what happens to do-gooder ADA’s who stick their noses where they don’t belong when it comes to Annalise Keating.

So. She makes it through the questioning unscathed, unflinching, not giving up even the tiniest scrap of information that could be misconstrued or used in DA’s favor. The others apparently do the same, striding back into the office afterwards brazen and confident as ever – though Laurel is watching Michaela closely, and can’t help but notice that she’s quieter than she usually is, withdrawn. She doesn’t mention it though, and goes through the motions of the rest of the day as normal – never leaving the office, because although they don’t have any work, they’re not about to split up anytime soon with Philip at large. Wes dodges her when she tries to talk to him, latched on to the idea that he’d killed his mother as he is, but the burn is alleviated just a little – or _a lot_ – when Oliver brings them two pizzas for an early dinner. Laurel gorges herself on five slices of pepperoni and washes it down with Coke, which ends up being a stupid idea when she bloats out like a balloon and spends the rest of the afternoon into the evening trying not to succumb to a food coma.  

It’s close to nine when she notices Michaela start to pace in the next room, beside Bonnie’s desk. She’s dressed in a red dress that clings to every inch of her like a second skin, each curve accentuated perfectly and tastefully; Laurel has noticed Asher staring on more than one occasion, and every now and then she’s found herself doing the same – but it’s not the dress that catches her eye.

Well, that’s a lie. It absolutely _is_ the dress that catches her eye, but it’s also the creases of worry in her forehead, the fear in her eyes, her bitten lip; the look of restlessness and uneasiness about her, like she can’t stand to be cooped up in this office another second. Considering the fact that she feels like she weighs an extra hundred pounds, it takes just about all of Laurel’s energy to haul herself to her feet and make her way over to where Michaela paces a nervous line back and forth, back and forth. She continues even when she sees Laurel stroll over and lean against the front of Bonnie’s desk, watching in silence for a moment, and only stopping in her tracks when she finally speaks up.

“They’ll find him,” Laurel tells her, voice low. “The police, I mean. They will.”

Michaela gives her an incredulous look. “The police is this city are inept. We’ve gotten away with murder like three times.”

That’s a fair point, Laurel has to admit. She shrugs.

“I’m sure they’re doing their best. And even if they’re not, there’s nothing we can really do but wait.”

“Just wait? Sit around doing nothing while Philip is probably… peeling off Caleb’s fingernails right now, or something?” Michaela shoots back, resuming her pacing. “We should be out there doing something. _Looking_ for him.”

“Looking where? We have no idea where they could be.”

Michaela sighs, deflating slightly. “I know, I just… I-”

The sound of Annalise’s office door opening silences her immediately. Laurel gets to her feet, standing up straighter out of instinct when Annalise comes into view – but there’s something unsteady about her gait, a bleariness in her eyes, and the instant Laurel catches a whiff of the scent of alcohol practically emanating from the woman, she knows what it is.

“Get out,” she slurs immediately, and Michaela and Laurel glance at each other, confused.

When no one moves, Annalise raises her voice, grabbing Laurel’s purse from the coffee table and all but chucking it at her. “Get _out_! Everyone leave.”

Connor sits up, brow furrowed. “Uh, we _can’t_ , remember? Philip’s out there.”

“For realz,” Asher chimes in. “Someone had too many?”

“A whole bottle of vodka,” Annalise answers, unabashed, “and if you all had balls, you’d be drunk too. So go! Carpe diem before this whole ship goes down.”

Oliver gives her a confused look from where he sits at the desk, asking what, exactly, that means, but thankfully he’s too scared to press when Annalise orders them out again – all of them except Wes, who she calls into her office, and who goes without protest, wide-eyed and bewildered. Laurel watches them disappear into the next room with a frown, then shakes her head, lets out a breath, and saunters over to where Michaela stands, gathering her things.

“C’mon. Let’s go out. Get drunk like she said,” she urges. When Michaela doesn’t budge, she sweetens the deal. “I’ll buy you a drink. Or ten.”

“What’re you trying to do?” Michaela scoffs. “Get me drunk to take advantage of me?”

Though sex with Michaela is, admittedly, something Laurel has caught herself contemplating far too many times to be healthy in recent days, she just stares at her, straight-faced, then takes a step toward the door.

“It’s for your own good. And are you really about to turn down free alcohol when we could all be dead this time tomorrow?”

Finally, at that, Michaela follows, only half-trying to seem reluctant this time.


	7. VII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hooo boy this chap is a doozy (and something you've all been waiting for)!!
> 
> Side note: if parts/lines in this look familiar, that’s because they came from 'Fakin’ It', a standalone Lauraela oneshot that I almost developed into a multi-chap like this a while back, but didn’t. So, I’ve taken that down and brought parts of it to this fic, where I think it fits in much better ;) Enjoy you thirsty hoes.

True to her word, Laurel buys her a drink. Many drinks, in fact. Probably more than the promised ten.

She buys them _all_ drinks, running a tab and handing over her father’s credit card to the bartender without batting an eye. Asher jokes they should all order the most expensive shit available, if Laurel’s dad is treating them. Patrón. Grey Goose. Anything top shelf. Whole bottles for the road.  

Laurel doesn’t protest. She just grins, a bit wryly, as if amused by some secret joke, downs what must be her fourth or fifth shot of tequila in an hour, and tells Asher to go right ahead.

And so they proceed to get drunk off their asses; as wise a choice as any, Michaela figures, when there’s a serial killer out for their blood.

They’re at a bar, all five of them – plus Oliver and minus Wes, who’s off God knows where doing God knows what with Annalise – lined up in a row and guzzling down liquor as fast as the bartender can slide it towards them. Michaela has no idea what the name of this place is; she’s too buzzed to notice much of anything besides the beat of the catchy pop song booming over the speakers, making the hardwood floor vibrate and her bones rattle. She’s warm all over, from head to toe, hips swaying half-unconsciously as she throws back another shot of vodka, cringing when it hits her tongue and making a face. Truth be told, she doesn’t much like the taste of alcohol. Or drinking in general. She never has.

But truth be told, if she’s going to get murdered tonight, she thinks she could stand to have a little something to take the edge off, at least.  

“Here’s to Philip,” Connor drawls, raising his glass in a toast. No one follows suit, but he doesn’t seem to care. “May he make our deaths as quick and painless as possible.”

“Screw Philip,” Asher slurs, slamming his fist down on the bar. “Y’know what? I took… fuckin’… karate as a kid. I was a white belt. I could take his scrawny ass _any_ day.”

“White belt?” Laurel scoffs, more sober than the rest of them but tipsy enough to be laughing more than usual, her shoulders loose, hair mussed and cheeks red. “You mean, the belt you _start with_?”

“Hey,” Asher protests. “I had two stripes!”

“Karate kid over here,” Connor declares, raising his eyebrows. “Gonna Mister Miyagi the shit out of Philip and save us all.”

Michaela snorts. “My hero.”

Asher hums, leaning over to look down the bar at Michaela and wriggling his eyebrows. “You know I’d be your hero any day, boo.”

Without warning, Laurel slings a possessive arm around her shoulder, making a face at Asher and tugging her close. “Uh, I know you weren’t present for that conversation, but I’ve already staked my claim on her should an orgy situation ever arise, so. Paws off.”

“Staked?” Connor looks confused for a moment. “Or… stook. Staken?”

Michaela just downs the shot in front of her and shakes her head, shrugging Laurel off. “You’re both creeps. I’m gonna dance.”

More than a little confused by Laurel’s innuendo and oddly aroused by all this talk of orgies, she stumbles her way over to what could be construed as a dancefloor; a decently-sized open space to the right of the bar with a few people standing around, making half-assed attempts at shuffling as they sip their drinks but not really doing much in the way of dancing. But Michaela is not about to half-ass anything tonight, not when it might very well be her last, and so she takes to the floor almost immediately, swaying and spinning around and fist-pumping to the obnoxious dance-dubstep-whatever-the-hell-it’s-called song that’s said the same two words at least twenty times in a row.

People are watching. Older guys, in suits. Girls, from one corner of the room, holding fruity mixed drinks, who she thinks are laughing at her. She’s too drunk to care. She makes the nearby wall her dance partner, grinding and pressing her ass against it, and when she glances over at the bar she finds the others watching her, looking amused; all of them except Laurel, inexplicably.

No, Laurel doesn’t look amused. She’s watching her more intently than the others, with something like contemplation in her eyes, almost. Something serious; a heavy, meaningful gaze Michaela thinks she’s seen before, one she’s _sure_ she’s seen before. She keeps staring, biting her lip and looking her up and down, even after the others have given up and resumed taking shots.

If Michaela were less hammered, she’d probably take the time to decode that look, puzzle over it and figure out what it means. But for now…

For now, the logical part of her brain is out of commission, and she fully intends to dance her ass off, and _God_ , has this song always been so _good_?

She’s right in the middle of a series of very complex, spasmodic, ballerina-esque twirls when suddenly the world starts to look like a globe someone has spun too fast on its axis. She stumbles backwards, and is all but prepared to land on her ass in front of everyone like an idiot – when suddenly, a pair of hands catch her by the arms and prop her back up

“Woah there, dancing queen.”

Bewildered, Michaela spins around and finds Laurel standing in front of her, having downed just as many shots as her but somehow – even though she’s so tiny Michaela thinks a stiff wind could probably take her down – holding her liquor ten times better. Sometime during Michaela’s dance routine she’d shed her leather jacket, leaving her in her tight, sleeveless maroon top and too-long slacks that make her look a bit shorter than she actually is. Her eyes are dancing with that familiar silent amusement, but there’s something behind them still, buried deep. For a moment Michaela just stares at her, lips parted with inexplicable fascination, before she snaps out of it and wipes off her sweaty forehead with the back of her hand.

“Sorry,” she slurs, not knowing what else to say. “Uh, thanks.”

They stand there for a moment in semi-awkward silence, before another song starts playing over the speakers – some Flo Rida song about asses she’s heard a million and one times before. It takes her a moment to discern what it is over the noise, but when she does she throws her head back, giving a triumphant cry.

“Ugh, this is my _song_!” she declares, and takes Laurel by the arm, pulling her onto the dancefloor without giving her much of a choice. “C’mon. Dance with me!”

Vaguely, she remembers those words, remembers Laurel grabbing her in the club and dragging her out onto the dancefloor whether she’d liked it or not, remembers the flashing of strobe lights and booming of music and dancing all over her for half an hour until they were both sweat-soaked and exhausted, and things hadn’t seemed simple then, but compared to how they are now… Things back then were pretty fucking simple – or their body count was lower, at least. Laurel seems to be remembering the same thing, and grins, letting herself be yanked forward without protest and joining in when Michaela starts back up again, shaking everything she has at a speed that is almost certainly going to make her puke if she keeps this up for much longer.

And so they dance.

 _Dance_ is probably not the right word; dancing implies finesse, grace, and none of this is graceful. They flail. Fist-pump. Spin around. Sway. Once or twice Laurel ends up behind her, all but grinding against her ass, and maybe it’s on purpose or maybe it’s not; Michaela doesn’t know. Can’t say she particularly cares, because suddenly everything about her is drawing Michaela in closer like a spell, so close their chests brush, and she can see the way Laurel is biting her lip, flushed red from her hairline down to her neck, looking like she wants something – looking, almost, like she wants _her_. Her eyes are hazy, pupils visibly dialated, blown up twice their normal size. Her skin is glistening with a thin sheen of sweat, and every now and then she swipes her tongue across her bottom lip for some reason – to clean off the sweat, or to wet it, or just to make her watch.

And Michaela _does_ watch. Every. Damn. Time.

A good twenty minutes into dancing all over each other, Michaela breaks away and tells her, “I gotta pee.”

She starts to amble her way off the dancefloor, and Laurel follows close behind. “I’ll come too.”

Michaela looks back briefly to look at her, brow furrowed. Laurel shrugs, seeming more drunk than she had before – even though she hasn’t had a drop since they started dancing.

“What?” she raises her voice over the music. “There’s a killer on the loose, _Michaela_. Buddy system, remember?”

 _We’re all killers on the loose,_ Michaela thinks about saying, but quickly decides announcing that to everybody at this bar that they’re complicit in multiple homicides is probably not the best call.

Not that her rational decision-making skills are much good these days, but. Still.

So she stays quiet, teetering precariously on her heels while Laurel trails behind her. The music fades to a low thumping in the distance, and they slink out of the fray into the relative calm of the hallway, with scratched hardwood floors and peeling yellow paint on the walls. It’s only then, away from the mind-numbing bass and haze of cigarette smoke, that Michaela’s mind finally snaps back to semi-clarity, or at least enough for the reality of the situation to come crashing back down on her like a bag of bricks.

Caleb. Philip. Caleb’s gone. Philip _has_ Caleb. Caleb is almost certainly dead by now, in some gruesome, horrific, bloody way, if Philip’s handiwork with the Hapstall’s was any indication. She’s never going to see him again. Or maybe she will, but it’ll just be his body. The chopped-up pieces of him, like Sam.

Oh God. Oh _God_ , she’s going to be sick.  

Laurel seems to notice the shift in her mood as they come to a stop just outside the women’s restroom. Michaela slows, before halting in her tracks and letting out a breath, deflating all at once. She totters a bit, for the millionth time tonight, reaching out to press a hand against the wall to steady herself, and Laurel circles around to her front, frowning.

“Hey,” she says, and her voice is almost a coo. “What’s wrong?”

Michaela sniffles, lowering her eyes. “We… We should’ve warned him. Warned Caleb. _I_ should’ve.”

She hates this part of the night: her inevitable, blubbering weepy-drunk stage, after the music and dancing and the numbness of the liquor start to wear off, and she breaks down when she realizes just how completely fucked her life is. The deluge of tears is coming on faster than she can stop it up, and before she knows it she can feel them brimming over her eyelids and tumbling down her cheeks, uncontrollable and pathetic, so _pathetic_.

“It’s okay,” Laurel soothes, voice low, as she takes a step even closer, so that their chests brush ever so slightly. She doesn’t look like she notices. Michaela does. She’s worried sick, and Caleb is missing, maybe dead, and all she can notice is how fucking _close_ Laurel is. “It’s not your fault.”

She manages a watery scoff. “You know it is. I-I kept it from him. I did what Annalise… what Annalise told me to do. I was so _stupid_ to trust her, God…”

“None of this is your fault,” Laurel asserts, voice slurred but steady. Michaela lowers her eyes again, tries to hide her tears, and Laurel reaches out, urging her chin back up. “Hey, look at me. Don’t cry.”

She avoids her eyes for as long as she can, looking everywhere but into them, before finally she settles on meeting Laurel’s gaze. Laurel gives her a little smile when she does, moving her hand up to caress her cheek gently, in a gesture that feels platonic and somehow at the same time very much _not_ platonic at all. She expects her to move it after a moment, but Laurel doesn’t; she keeps it there, fingers stroking her skin idly, and before she can help it Michaela is turning her face into her palm, seeking comfort.

“Don’t cry,” Laurel breathes. “I hate seeing you cry.”

Laurel is inching closer. Michaela hadn’t even known she could _get_ any closer – but somehow, in some impossible way like the impossible girl she is, she has. Their faces are level, noses brushing. And then, out of nowhere, Laurel is leaning in, pressing her sweaty forehead against hers, then moving back and laying a kiss on her cheek, tender, no more than a ghosting of her lips. If the logical part of Michaela’s brain was functioning tonight, she’d pull away in a second, shove her off, call her crazy, but there’s a hum in her bones, distinct and so overwhelming that her entire body feels like it’s throbbing with one singular beat, pulsing in time with her heart. Almost by their own accord Michaela’s hands slide up to Laurel’s arms, then her back, pulling her closer, letting her move in, and – _God_. She hadn’t known it was possible to feel so _close_ to someone.

“Don’t cry,” Laurel murmurs again, breath hot in her ear. “Please don’t ever cry, Michaela.”

Michaela isn’t sure who initiates the kiss.

It’s probably Laurel – though some tiny, nagging part of her brain tells her that it’s her, because she wants this, no denying it, no lying to herself anymore _; she wants this_. But Laurel’s lips end up on hers some way or other, softer and suppler than she’d thought someone’s lips could be. Her mind is in a state of simultaneous chaos and total calm, like a fever dream. Her senses feel heightened, every nerve ending in her body tingling, every touch receptor ten times more responsive. Laurel’s hand works its way into her hair, and they stumble back against the wall together as Michaela deepens the kiss, opening her mouth for Laurel’s tongue and giving a soft whimper when she accepts the invitation vigorously, surging forward.

It’s sloppy. Too much spit and tongue and awkward colliding of teeth; more of an attack than a kiss. By the time Laurel pulls back, both their lips are coated with saliva, and their breathing is heavy, and it takes a moment for Michaela’s foggy, malfunctioning mind to register what she’s just done. Kissed a girl. Kissed _Laurel_. She should, logically, be freaking the fuck out right now.

It all takes a moment to register.

Then, Michaela pounces again.  

“We shouldn’t be doing this,” Michaela pants between kisses, as Laurel urges her backward toward the bathroom door, pushing it open. “Caleb is – he’s… missing-”

They’re in the bathroom, then. Laurel fumbles awkwardly with the lock behind them until it latches, and for a second Michaela catches herself wondering what the _hell_ kind of bar bathroom locks from the inside. She doesn’t know what she’s doing. Doesn’t know where the others are, and doesn’t really give a fuck. They’ll wonder where they are, wonder what they’re doing, and what _are_ they doing, oh God, what is _she_ doing?

“Bad idea… this is a, _oh_ -” Michaela gasps when Laurel walks her over to the sink and presses her back against it, her ass all but slamming against the cold marble. Laurel is relentless, dropping her lips down to her neck as her hands venture lower and lower, groping up and down her sides. “L-Laurel, we can’t… I can’t – I’m not-”

“This is a bad idea,” Laurel agrees, in the middle of the kiss. Her voice is high-pitched, breathy. Beneath the dim glow of the lights above them, her skin is blood-red. “Oh God, Michaela…”

The sound of her name, spoken like that, makes Michaela shudder; a full-bodied shudder, so powerful she feels it in her bones, rattling through her like a little earthquake. She’s drunk, she thinks, vaguely. She’s drunk – that’s the only reason her panties are so wet and filthy that she knows they’re probably ruined for good, the only reason she’s letting Laurel fucking Castillo kiss her and hoist her up onto a sink in some disgusting bar bathroom and slip her lithe little hand up her dress like a heat-seeking missile.

The only reason she’s so turned on she could die. The _only_ reason.

Laurel’s hand is up her dress, resting on her bare thigh, smoothing idly up and down but venturing no higher. Said dress is hiked up around her hips, leaving her wide open, long legs and pink panties on display, and she tries to feel ashamed but can’t. Inexplicably, for some reason, Laurel has stopped, and through the cloudiness in her eyes Michaela can see the gears in the other girl’s mind turning, lips pursed in contemplation.

She may be trying to talk herself out of this. Because of Frank. Because of Caleb. Because of an infinitely long list of reasons, none of which matter now, all of which feel millions of miles away from here. Michaela is still kind of trying to do the same thing, and losing the battle against her instincts repeatedly as she tries to squirm down onto her hand, whimpering urgently, hands groping one of the faucets behind her for leverage. She squeezes her thighs together, desperate for some kind of friction, anything.

She’s no longer able to realize that she shouldn’t do this. She _should_.

“Do it, doit, Laurel – _please_.” Her voice is reedy, so desperate that she barely recognizes it. She begs before she can help it, before she can remember that Michaela Pratt does not _beg_. “Pleasepleaseplease…”

Without warning, Laurel reaches for her hand and guides it down, between her legs, then urges her to dip inside her panties. Laurel gives a soft sigh when she feels how wet she is – almost embarrassingly so, considering how little of her body she’s actually touched – and Michaela bites back a moan, her eyelids fluttering shut.

“ _God_ , you’re so wet…” Laurel pants, and dips her hand inside too, curling it around Michaela’s and guiding her once more, urging her to stroke herself. Their joined hands glide across her folds, shaven and silky-smooth, and Laurel gives another sigh, breathing into her ear, “Touch yourself. Let me help you.”

Michaela lets her. Of course she does. She lets Laurel control her hand, lets her cup her between her legs and massage her wetness up onto her clit to slick it, and lets her tell her what to do; where to touch. She places Michaela’s fingers on her clit, urging her to work it back and forth while she probes two fingers around her cunt and presses them inside, and they’re soaked so fast that she adds another, stretching her further, making her pant half-hysterically.

Her panties are gone. God only knows where Laurel had flung them. Her thighs are quivering. She can feel her pussy clenching, the delicate muscles there fluttering as Laurel fucks her fingers in and out and she strokes her clit, their hands working in tandem to bring her off, and there’s something so unimaginably _hot_ about that that she can’t stand it. She touches herself wildly, each stroke frantic and frenzied, her clit responding with soft zings of electricity that smolder low in her belly, and she’s panting and swearing so loud that anyone on the other side of the door would probably be able to hear, but she can’t bring herself to care, drunk off her ass and getting the finger-fucking of a lifetime as she is.

“Oh God – fuck, Laurel…” The words come out in a burst; she’s always been a babbler during sex, and tonight is no exception. “I’m gonna come, y-y-you’re gonna make me come, oh GodohGod-”

“Mmm,” Laurel slurs, and something switches on in her eyes that makes her look positively predatory. “Oh God, I wanna make you come…”

At that, Michaela moans, low and long and guttural. She has no doubt in her mind that Laurel fully intends to follow through on _that_ promise.

It’s clumsy, just like the kiss. All of it. Sloppy. Downright _filthy_ , trashy, high school sex in a bathroom. She’s moaning wantonly for all the world to hear, shaking and shivering, touching herself, letting Laurel have her wicked way with her. She considers, briefly, how she must look: legs spread, stroking herself like she’ll die if she doesn’t come soon, so unbelievably sopping wet that all she can hear is the obscene squelching of Laurel’s fingers as she thrusts them in and out with a steadiness and confidence that lead Michaela to believe she’s most definitely done this before. Sober-Michaela Pratt would be horrified to see herself reduced to this, to a sweaty, moaning animal, blubbering incoherently, like an infant.

But Drunk-Michaela Pratt doesn’t give two shits. Not even one shit. _Zero_ shits, as a matter of fact.

“Come,” Laurel orders suddenly. Michaela’s only reply is a high-pitched mewl of frustration as she massages her clit, in circles and long, hard, relentless swipes, and Laurel removes her fingers briefly, patting her on the cunt, nipping at her ear. Her voice is gentle, coaxing. “Come on, Michaela. I know you’re close. Let go, c’mon…”

She _is_. Every inch of her body feels coiled excruciatingly tight, every muscle pulled taut, like they’re about to snap from the strain. She’s tensing, building, building, _building_ , hips bucking uncontrollably, one hand clutching the cold metal faucet behind her. Sweat is dripping from her face, her jaw clenched in determination; she’s nothing if not determined, and she’s certainly fucking determined to come tonight, but her fingers aren’t enough, the stimulation on her clit falling just short of what she needs. She groans again in frustration, tears beading in her eyes, stroking her stubborn clit harder, slamming her head back against the mirror, so hard she thinks for a second that she’s broken it.

Laurel, ever perceptive and sensing her predicament, has two fingers inside of her again before she can ask for them, batting Michaela’s hand away, pistoning in and out, the pace wild, almost violent. If she weren’t so drunk, Michaela’s pretty sure it would hurt, but any pain is beaten into submission by the vicious pleasure, so huge and terrifying and careening towards her so fast that she almost wants to beg her to slow down, that it’s _too much, too much, she can’t take it, she’s too sensitive_ …

“Do it,” she urges again, lowly, her face buried in her throat, nuzzling her neck. “Come for me, _princesa_.”

She does.

That’s all it takes to break her – that softly-spoken, gentle, tender _princesa_ , belying the rapid pace of her fingers. She’d called her that once before, the night they’d shared Laurel’s bed. _Princesa_. _Fuck_ , it’s so hot it dismantles her, makes her crumble into a million tiny pieces like shards of broken glass. Her vision whites out, ever so briefly, a lightshow playing behind her eyelids, fireworks and stars and supernovas, and so much light it’s blinding.

Her mouth drops open, and the moan she lets out is almost inhuman, some beast of a girl rising up and taking control of her body, and if she says something – and she probably does – she doesn’t have a clue what it is, if it’s even intelligible English. She comes all over her fingers, and they’re so sticky, and her inner thighs are so sticky – and _Christ_ , she’s filthy all over, her juices smeared on the creases of her thighs, all over her folds, up higher, to the hood of her clit. She’s wide open. On display, all of her, for Laurel’s hungry eyes, and they _are_ hungry. Laurel looks downright ravenous, some creature fueled by want and lust, so different from the shy wallflower she’d been months ago that Michaela wants to laugh.

She feels like she’s sinking as she comes down, the force of gravity sucking her back into the stratosphere, her stomach settling. Her orgasm ebbs and starts to fade away until her body is left humming faintly with the electric aftershocks. She’s weak all over, every inch of her, her head lolling to one side. She’s barely lucid. Her shoulders slump, limp as a ragdoll. Her tongue doesn’t feel like it’s her own. _None_ of her body feels like it’s her own, and before she can think twice-

“Oh _God_ , I love you.”

Laurel grins, drawing back and wiping her sticky fingers off on her slacks. “Yeah?”

“Yes,” she manages to choke out, sucking in a breath. “ _Fuck_ yes, oh my God, that was…”

“Everything you hoped it’d be and more?” Laurel teases, stumbling forward and brushing her lips across hers.

Michaela scoffs, but her eyes are dancing, a smile playing at her lips. “Cockiness is so _not_ a turn-on, FYI.”

In lieu of some snarky response, Laurel just kisses her again, deeply, tangling a hand in her hair. She bites her lip gently as she pulls away, grazing it with her teeth, and it ignites a fire inside Michaela, out of nowhere; one that  in her belly and catches lower, lower. Something clicks, inside of her. She clenches her jaw in determination, bold and brazen in her drunkenness and without even the slightest of inhibitions to hold her back, conceal what she really wants – something she’s done too many times to count, in her life.

“You now,” she tells her. “Wanna do you.”

“Do you?”

Laurel looks amused, like she thinks she’s kidding, but Michaela hops down off the counter without hesitation, yanking her dress back down around her hips and capturing her lips once more, making it abundantly clear she is _not_. She walks them back into one of the stalls, barely aware of what she’s doing, only knowing that she needs to do it, might die if she doesn’t. With clumsy, fumbling fingers, Laurel makes off with her slacks, sending them tumbling down around her ankles but leaving her panties on, and in seconds Michaela has her shoved back hard against the stall wall, bodies pressed together tight in what is, admittedly, not the most convenient position, or the most convenient place. Michaela would much rather have a bed – to spread Laurel out on. Look at every inch of her. She wants that so much and so suddenly that it catches her off guard.

For a long moment, right then, Michaela pauses. Stops. Just looks at her, up and down, studying each minute detail, like she’s never seen anything quite like her – and right then, she’s sure she’s never seen anything like Laurel Castillo at all. She’s a sight to behold: cheeks beet-red, hair sloppy with sex, lips swollen and shiny, pant-less and not looking the least bit ashamed of it. Laurel’s always been bolder, about this; about sex. Not ashamed, not like Michaela had been taught to be, and even now staring her down, she’s just as unflappable, just as strong, chin held at a firm, confident angle, eyes never shying away from her curious gaze. She stares right back, smirks, and leans in to kiss her again like she doesn’t have a single reason in the universe not to.

No, Michaela’s never seen anything like her. Never has. Never will again.

“I don’t know what to do,” she half-whimpers, pulling away, reaching out to cup Laurel over her panties and feeling the moisture gathering there already. She urges her legs apart to give her better access, and Laurel shifts accordingly, widening her stance, opening herself up.

“Just do what I did. Follow your instincts. You’ll know.”

“I wanna make you feel good. Feel… like you made me, Laurel, I want to, I wanna…”

And so she reaches out, eager to please as ever – even more so now, drunk as she is, off the liquor and off Laurel’s musky, heady scent. She strokes her over the lace. Massages the bump of her clit, listening with a grin as Laurel gasps and tilts her head back, exposing her slim, pale throat. She shoves her panties to one side and probes one finger inside half-timidly, testing the waters, before adding a second and crooking them. It all happens in flashes, like a reel of film skipping from frame to frame. Laurel’s moans are soft, breathy. She loves the sound of them, wants to wring every single one she can from her throat. Wants all of her. Everything. More. _More, more, more._

The next thing Michaela knows, Laurel is breathless and shaky and on the brink of collapsing against the wall. She doesn’t know how long it’d taken, what she’d done. All she knows that her fingers are sticky, dripping with the pearlescent beads of her wetness, and she raises them to her lips, sucking the juices off greedily, moaning at the taste: sweet, tangy, _addictive_. Laurel’s eyes are shut, her body limp with exhaustion and a loopy grin on her lips. Michaela can practically feel her buzzing.

“Was I good?” Michaela asks, seeking approval even when she’s so intoxicated she can hardly see straight. “Was-”

“Perfect,” Laurel praises her gently, as if she knows just how much she loves hearing those words. She kisses her, murmuring them against her lips. “You’re perfect.”

Normally, Michaela Pratt is a list-maker. Bad and good. Pros and cons. She writes them out meticulously, poring over them almost obsessively when it comes to making decisions. She hadn’t had time to make a list for this. In her state, all she can see are the pro’s in this situation as Laurel kisses her again, soft and sweet and so tender she wants to cry. Every potential con feels like they exist in a different galaxy, light years away and barely perceptible.

Pro: Laurel’s lips are soft.

Pro: Laurel’s soft lips are kissing her, just as softly.

Pro: Laurel is stunning, flushed from head to toe, looking like a vision before her, calling her perfect.  

Pro: She’s far too hammered to realize that this is, almost certainly, a colossal mistake for the ages.

Pro: Laurel wants her.

Pro: She wants Laurel.

She wants Laurel. Laurel wants her. Those are the only pro’s Michaela needs to make up her mind, she decides, as Laurel’s tongue prods against her lips again, seeking entry, which she grants with a quiet mewl. They’re the only things that matter, in this cramped, dirty bar bathroom, in this disgusting, grimy stall, in this beautiful, _beautiful_ little corner of the world that’s all theirs.

Those are the only things that matter. Laurel is all she can see.   


	8. VIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Big news!! At 30 chapters and 100k words, this fic is now complete, so if you’re apprehensive about this being a forever unfinished WIP, don’t be! I’ve updated a bit early in celebration of this, and I’m super excited for you guys to read the rest of this fic :D

In the morning, Laurel wakes up to a splitting headache burrowing its way into her skull.

She winces. Her eyes flutter open, then close just as quickly at the assault of bright sunlight coming in through the window, and she eases herself up slowly. After rubbing her eyes and squinting for a while, she’s able to deduce that she’s in her own bed, alone, dressed in what she’s pretty sure are the clothes she was wearing last night – or at least she thinks so, because the space that _last night_ should occupy in her memory is one giant gaping hole, interspersed with flashes that she can barely put together, like some kind of alcoholic puzzle.  

The bar. The shots – she must’ve had a hell of a lot of those, judging by the pounding in her head and her feeling of overall shittiness. The dancing. Michaela. She’d danced with Michaela, and then they’d gone to the bathroom together, and gone inside together, for some reason, and-

Wait.

The kiss, before. The counter. Lifting up her skirt. Michaela’s begging. Her _moaning_ , obscene and desperate. Her fingers, dripping with wetness, buried knuckles-deep inside her. How wet she’d been, gushing, sopping. Drenched.

And – oh.

Oh _God_. She’d had sex with Michaela Pratt.

Drunk sex. Sloppy sex. Downright filthy sex. ‘Sex’ almost isn’t even the right word; ‘fucking’ seems far more appropriate a term. She remembers it now – not much, but enough to be sure.

Shit. She’s not exactly sure what she’s supposed to do about this.

Especially considering she can still taste her.  

So yes, admittedly, she’s always had a bit of a crush on Michaela; a pesky, harmless little crush, exacerbated by the week they’d spent living together – but that crush isn’t quite as _harmless_ anymore, and she’s freaking out, and yet at the same time she’s eerily calm, too sleep-addled and hungover for her mind to register the gravity of the situation. Sighing, Laurel reaches up and runs a hand through her tangled hair, her eyes flying to the sheets next to her and finding them empty, not rumpled or messy like anyone had occupied them last night. She’d gone home alone. She has, to be honest, no clue _how_ she got home, but an Uber seems the most likely bet, and she has to give kudos to whatever driver she’d had who chose not to rob her drunk ass blind, since her wallet and keys and phone are all accounted for. Sometime afterward she and Michaela had left the bar and gone their separate ways – and that’s where the blurry mess that was last night cuts off.

She’s freaking out. A lot. And she freaks out ten times more when she reaches for her phone and checks the time, and realizes she was supposed to be at the office half an hour ago.

 _Fuck fuck fucking fuck,_ she really does _not_ need to add getting fired to her growing list of recent screw-ups – though, to be fair, her list of recent screw-ups also contains murder. At least she didn’t add to her body count last night.

As far as she can remember, anyway. She just added to her booty count.

Pushing the thought out of her mind – and trying to ignore the fact that she’s pretty sure Michaela will be waiting at the office when she gets there – Laurel springs up out of bed, hurls a couple times into the toilet, brushes her teeth to get the taste of the liquor and the taste of Michaela Pratt off her tongue, and spritzes dry shampoo in her greasy hair, in an abortive attempt to make it look presentable. She parts it sloppily over one side when it refuses to cooperate otherwise, flinging off her dirty clothes and tugging on a blouse and black tights and her trusty leather jacket. She grabs her bottle of cherry-flavored Pedialyte on the way out, which tastes like ass but is a necessary evil in situations like this, and speeds to the office – although it is, to be honest, the very last place on earth she wants to go right now.

She doesn’t want to see Frank. Or Wes. Or any of the others. She _especially_ does not want to see Michaela, because she already has a pretty good idea of how Michaela is going to react. She’s going to flip out. Has probably, already, flipped out in the privacy of her apartment. She’s going to avoid her, at first; it’s all but inevitable, if her freak-out over Connor and Aiden was any indication. At some point Laurel is going to have to corner her to talk this through, and figure out where the hell to go from here.

But she doesn’t have the energy or the patience for that this morning. Those are problems for another day – even if she can still feel Michaela’s lips on hers, soft and sweet and receptive; even if she can still feel Michaela’s fingers inside of her, how tentatively and gently she’d moved, not having a clue what to do but being so, so very eager to learn _and_ eager to please. Even if she can still remember the glorious sight that was Michaela Pratt unraveling, throwing her head back, coming all over her fingers and coming undone.

Nope. No sir. Problems for another day.

The office is in a state of disarray when she gets there, which is far from unusual, and the sounds of panicked voices carry through the walls as she makes her way down the hallway, stumbling a bit and wincing at the bright light. It takes Laurel’s hungover brain a minute to decode what they’re saying, and when she makes out their words she frowns.

“Seriously, what did she want to talk to you about?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Annalise is missing. Caleb is missing. _Everything’s_ our business now.”

“Annalise is missing?” Laurel asks, brow furrowed, as she rounds the corner and comes to a stop in the living room.

The rest of the group, plus Oliver, are standing around, facing Wes, who has planted himself behind the couch with his arms folded. They turn the moment they hear her voice, and her eyes fly to Michaela’s immediately before she can help it – and when she notices the flicker of recognition in the other girl’s eyes, and the way she looks away as fast as humanly possible, she knows that she remembers, too. Laurel’s heart seizes up stupidly in her chest, when she does.  

“Where have you been?” Connor demands, snapping her out of it.

“Hungover,” Laurel answers, and blinks. “Where’d she go?”

“Do we need us to define the word ‘missing’ for you?” Asher pipes up, his voice amplified a hundred times, like he’s shouting straight into her ear with a megaphone.  

Laurel winces, plopping down onto the recliner in the doorway. “Can everyone stop yelling, please?”

Michaela glances over at her, then glances away again just as fast. Laurel pretends not to notice.

“I can hack into her credit cards,” Oliver suggests.

Michaela lets out a breath and nods. “Perfect.”

“O-man to the rescue,” Asher chimes in.

“No one’s hacking Annalise,” Frank threatens, jaw clenched.

“Are you sure?” Bonnie asks, walking over from her desk with her phone in hand. “Nate hasn’t seen her since yesterday.”

“What time did you leave here last night?” Connor asks Wes, who shrugs.

“I don’t know. Nine o’ clock?”

“And do you have someone who can vouch for your whereabouts after that?” Connor presses.

“Do _you_?”

“Yeah, he’s sitting right there.”

Laurel freezes, all at once. The voices all meld together into an unintelligible cacophony of blabbering, like a deafening hum in the background, and her heart sinks down into the pit of her stomach when the rest of last night comes back to her, all at once. Leaving the bar. Calling a cab. Telling the driver to go to the office. Staggering up the front porch and knocking on the door. Annalise. Annalise had been there. She’d wanted to know what she said to Wes – that’s what it was.

And she’d told her. About Lila. About _Frank_. Said it was all her fault. That she’d played them all like puppets.

Apparently she can add that to her list of gigantic screw-ups, too.

She goes to Frank immediately, who is leaning against the doorway, arms folded. “I need to talk to you.”

“Not now,” he dismisses her with a frown.

Laurel glances around furtively, a note of added urgency in her voice. “ _Frank_.”

At that, he finally looks up and meets her eyes, then pauses, acquiesces, and nods in the direction of the kitchen. Laurel takes a quick sweep of the room, before ducking out and following Frank into the next room.

She can feel Michaela’s eyes burning into her back as she goes. She chooses to ignore it.

That’s a problem for another day, she reminds herself. A problem for another day.

 

~

 

It’s almost astounding how she’d singlehandedly managed to whip up a giant shitstorm in her drunken stupor last night.

Frank is freaking out – or as close to ‘freaking out’ as he can get, which mostly involves him doing a lot of blank staring off into space and muttering cryptic stuff under his breath she doesn’t understand. Somehow her telling Annalise about Lila is related to why she left, which makes no sense at all if Annalise ordered the hit on Lila to begin with, and she tries to get Frank to explain but Bonnie interrupts before he can, striding in and announcing that Oliver has traced Annalise’s credit card to Memphis, back home. Somehow she’d managed to scare the Great Annalise Keating all the way home to her mama, and she isn’t even sure exactly _why_.

The hours pass.

The shitstorm only continues to grow exponentially worse – more of a category five shit-hurricane than anything else. There’s a warrant out for Annalise’s arrest. Everyone else is freaking out, Laurel included, certain theirs is on the way too. Michaela is still refusing to be within less than a five-foot radius from her. Wes is a Puppy with a bone for the millionth time; this time about his father – Wallace Mahoney, he tells her, all but ready to pack his bags and hightail it to New York to find him. And she’s pretty sure Frank thinks she’s screwing Wes, now.

And Laurel is tired. All Laurel wants to do, if she’s being perfectly honest, is go home and lay down in her bed, and hide under the covers until Tropical Storm Shit blows over. But she knows better than to try to avoid things these days, and so when she happens upon Michaela alone at the coffee pot half-past eleven that night, she decides to try to make at least some kind of headway into resolving one of her many problems.

“Hey,” she greets, and Michaela flinches at the sound of her voice, looking up from her cup.

For a moment, the other girl doesn’t answer. Then, she huffs, grabs her mug of coffee, and goes for the door with a terse: “Hi.”

Laurel sighs, and steps in her way. “Michaela-”

“We’re _not_ ,” she emphasizes the word, raising her eyebrows, “talking about this. Capiche?”

Laurel blinks. “Did you just say ‘capiche’?”

She rolls her eyes. “Are we _clear_?”

“Michaela…” She shakes her head. “We can’t just not talk about this, ever.”

Michaela gives a half-laugh, half-scoff. “Uh, yes. _Yes_ we can.”

“Look, what happened-”

“ _Nothing_ happened,” she hisses, lowering her voice and looking around to ensure no one is listening. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have work to do.”

“What work?” Laurel gives her a look of disbelief. “Just… talk to me, okay? So we can figure out-”

“If nothing happened, why do we have anything to figure out?”

Laurel just looks at her, exhaling sharply. Somehow she’d forgotten how infuriating Michaela can be.

“Michaela-”

Michaela steps past her, not batting an eye. “This conversation is over.”

With that, she scurries out of the room and vanishes around the corner. Laurel watches her go, holding back a groan of frustration.

 

~

 

So, with Frank moping about, Annalise on the lam, the others panicking every time they so much as hear the sound of sirens in the distance, Wes off in his own little world, and Michaela pretty much covering her ears like a five-year old every time she tries to talk to her, Laurel wants nothing more than to get the hell out of the office.

She ends up at Frank’s apartment of all places, sipping expensive bourbon, sitting on his couch, and having a surprisingly normal conversation, all things considered – until her curiosity about Annalise finally wins out over her common sense, and she opens her big mouth to bring her up.

“What happened? With Annalise, I mean,” she asks, taking a drink. “What could be so bad that she just… ran home out of nowhere?”

Frank doesn’t answer for a moment, just takes a swig of his drink too and shakes his head.

“Thought we agreed this place was supposed to be an Annalise-free zone,” he says, finally.

“Does that rule still apply if we’re not dating?”

He gives a half-hearted shrug. “Let’s just say I’d rather not talk about it. Or her.”

Laurel narrows her eyes. “Why invite me over, then? If you aren’t going to tell me what’s going on?”

A pause. A rueful little grin makes its way onto his face.

“It so hard to believe I like spendin’ time with you? That I miss you?”

She shifts beneath his gaze, sighing. “Frank…”

“Look. I get it.” Frank’s voice is low. There’s a palpable air of resignation about him that makes her heart ache, until she remembers who he is, what he’s done, and it hardens again. He pauses, then gives her a lopsided smirk. “Still think about you all the time. It’s still friggin’ annoying. But… I’ll get over it.”

She gulps, lowering her eyes to her glass, staring down into the amber liquid and turning it around in her hands for a minute, not knowing what to say – because yes, Laurel knows who he is. She knows the real Frank, now – not the one he’d shown her before, the pseudo-nice guy. She knows the murderer, the monster, and some tiny, corrupted, fucked-up part of her still loves him, and she’s really fucking terrified that that little part of her will never stop.

And suddenly she feels guilty for sleeping with Michaela, so overwhelmingly guilty that it makes a lump gather in her throat. She’d tried to do everything she could these past few days to block out any and all thoughts of Frank, to stamp down her feelings whenever they reared their ugly head, but they all come flooding back in seconds, looking into his eyes. She loves him. She hates herself for it, and hates _him_. She has no _clue_ what to do – about him. Michaela. Any of it.

Nothing to do besides get drunk, she figures; though after last night she’s learned that tends to create more problems than it solves.   

“’Sides,” Frank breaks the silence, and takes another, longer sip of his bourbon. “You deserve better.”

Again, she sighs, reaching for the bottle and pouring another splash in her glass. “Can we talk about something that isn’t us? It’s-”

“Depressing as hell?” Frank nods, and refills his too. “Fine. What about you and the Puppy?”

She blinks. “Excuse me?”

His tone isn’t confrontational; it’s not an accusation. Frank doesn’t even look the least bit angry. _Resigned_ , she thinks again. He just looks resigned to the end of them, and it fills her with relief as much as it makes her stomach roil with something she thinks might be longing. Regret.

“You and the Puppy,” he repeats. “How long’s it been goin’ on?”

“We’re not…” Laurel drifts off, shaking her head. “Nothing’s going on.”

“For real?”

“ _Yes_ ,” she scoffs. “Wes is like… my brother.”

Frank raises his eyebrows. “So you’re not screwin’ him?”

Laurel doesn’t answer. She just holds back a dark chuckle and takes a sip, leaning back against the couch.

No, she’s not screwing _him_. If only he knew.

But that’s a problem for another day, Laurel decides, as she drains her glass and goes to pour another. A problem for another day.


	9. IX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Bit of news: I've done away with chapter titles just because coming up with them turned out to be a chore, and they didn't add much to this fic. There also are lines from Fakin' It sprinkled in this chapter too (sue me).
> 
> Also, I've been loving all the lovely kudos and feedback!! It encourages me to update a lot faster and means a lot :)

Twice a year, Michaela has what she’s come to call her Biannual Freakout.

Which is exactly what it sounds like. She freaks out, biannually. Usually when it’s around the time for finals, and all the stress weighs down on her chest so much she can’t breathe, and she’s prone to bursting into tears at any moment whenever she thinks about her class rank, and GPA, and exam scores. She doesn’t know if it’s anxiety; she’s never been formally diagnosed. But it sucks. A lot. The kind of crippling fear that makes her stomach roil so much she feels like she’s always on the verge of puking; the kind that controls her, keeps her up for hours at night, a sinister companion always at her side.

And this year it seems like her Biannual Freakout has come a month early, for another reason entirely.

She’s not going to think about it. Her and Laurel – no, no, she’s not going to even _think_ Laurel’s name, either. She was drunk, worried about Caleb and seeking comfort and being stupid. And Laurel had just… been there. Comforted her. Made her feel so safe, made her feel wanted. She can remember it, so clearly - _too_ clearly, she thinks, for how drunk she’d been. Laurel’s lips. Laurel’s fingers. Laurel’s mouth. The way the waves of pleasure had sucked her under, _drowned_ her, dismantled her, like nothing she’d ever felt before. Just thinking about it makes her squirm – and not in a bad way, not really, and that’s the thing that freaks her out the most.

So, Michaela resolves to do what she’s best at: avoiding. And, additionally, avoiding Laurel.

A few times the other girl tries to corner her and talk, but she brushes her off coldly. She knows Laurel doesn’t really deserve it; she’s collateral damage in her mission to delude herself, pretend nothing ever happened. And nothing _did_. And the more Michaela tells herself that lie, little by little, the more she starts to believe it.

Maybe. Just a bit. It would help if she could beat her subconscious into submission too though, because the dreams sure as hell are not helping.

But, overall, Michaela’s avoidance game seems to be working well enough for her – that is, until she steps out of the upstairs office bathroom into Annalise’s bedroom the next morning, and finds Laurel standing there, waiting for her.

Of course. Why break her weeklong streak of shitty luck now?

“Oh, _no_ ,” she bites out, and goes for the door immediately. “We are _not_ doing this again.”

“Michaela…” Laurel exhales sharply. “You can’t keep avoiding me. Just because we-”

“No – no!” Michaela rounds on her, holding up her hands. “Do not say it.”

“You don’t have to be like this! We can’t not talk about… what happened-”

Michaela shushes her, holding up a finger, then brushing past her, poking her head out the door to make sure no one is lurking outside, and closing it. Finally, she turns to look at Laurel, and huffs.

“What happened? _Nothing_ happened,” she snaps, keeping her voice low. “I was drunk, and stupid, and worried about Caleb a-and desperate. And – and just because you gave me an orgasm doesn’t mean anything, okay? It was just… sex.”

Laurel scoffs, folding her arms and looking cocky in that subtle way of hers that should definitely _not_ be making Michaela sweat like it is. She tries to keep her eyes from creeping lower, but the damn things do almost of their own volition, taking in Laurel’s too-tight purple sweater, stretched tight across her breasts, and another pair of black slacks that make her look even tinier than she is, accentuating the curve of her ass, and-

No. No. _Control, Michaela. Focus._

“ _An_ orgasm?” Laurel shoots back. “If I remember correctly-”

“Fine, fine! Orgasm _s_. Plural.” Michaela shifts her weight from one leg to the other, flustered, her heart beating at a pace that definitely can’t be healthy, or normal, and may very well be indicative of an imminent coronary. “There. Are you happy? We talked.”

“So what?” Laurel narrows her eyes. “We’re just going to pretend nothing ever happened? Ignore each other for the rest of the year?”

“As far as I’m concerned, nothing ever _did_ happen. And you know what? For the record, I didn’t even like it that much. Honestly, I barely even remember it.”

Laurel just gives her one of her trademark _Looks_ , and that’s all it takes to let Michaela know she isn’t buying any of it. Which is predictable. She’s about as transparent as glass, and a notoriously awful liar, and right now, standing right in front of Laurel with that penetrating grey-blue gaze of hers that cuts away at her, stripping her down past her layers until she may as well be standing naked before her, she knows she can’t hide a thing, no matter how hard she tries.

And it _is_ a lie. She does remember – not everything, but too much, more than she should. She knows it, and judging by the way Laurel’s eyes are dancing like she thinks the whole thing is some big fucking hilarious joke, she does, too.

“Really?” Laurel quips. “Says the girl who came so hard she told me she loved me.”

Michaela flinches. To be fair, she knew that unsavory little detail was going to come up sooner or later, but it still catches her off guard somehow, leaves her at a loss for words, her mouth moving dumbly, like a fish out of water gasping in the dry air.

“Look, just – I’m not, okay? Not… gay, o-or bisexual, and if you are, that’s fine, that’s great – I have a cousin who’s gay, but I’m _not_. I was drunk, and feeling… experimental, apparently.”

It sounds stupid. Michaela knows that, too, is a lie. Ever since she was young she’s tried to ignore it, that attraction to women, that persistent, nagging feeling; stomp it down whenever it reared its ugly head. _Unnatural_ , her father had called it, and the word had become all but ingrained in her skin, and every time she’d felt it, looked at a girl like that, had those brief, flickering, dirty thoughts, it was all she could hear: _dirty, unnatural. Wrong. Not the Lord’s plan._

Granted, Michaela stopped believing in _the Lord_ a long time ago. She couldn’t care less what some bearded, pretty-faced white boy up in the clouds thinks of her – but it’s still there, even if she tries to fight it. The flashes of shame. The revulsion she’s taught herself to feel. She’s trained – and _been_ trained – for this, and so she steels herself against Laurel’s gaze, even when the other girl melts, a frown pulling at her lips and pulling on Michaela’s heartstrings.

Laurel lets out a breath. “You don’t have to lie to me, Michaela.”

Michaela scoffs at that like she’s never heard something so ridiculous, folding her arms.

“What – are you trying to… to _tell_ me I’m gay, now? Because last I checked-”

“Kiss me.”

Michaela freezes. Laurel is just looking at her, straight-faced, unflinching, chin held high and feet planted firmly on the ground.

She gapes. “Excuse me?”

“Kiss me,” Laurel repeats, voice breathier this time. She inches closer, and Michaela hates herself for it, but she forgets to step away. “Just once. And if you don’t feel anything, then I promise I’ll leave, and never mention any of this ever again.”

Michaela’s mouth feels as dry as the Sahara. Ironically enough, _dry_ is the exact opposite of what she is down below, and the fact makes her shift her weight from one leg to another for what must be the millionth time, fidgeting underneath Laurel’s flinty stare. She’s never met a girl as unnerving as Laurel, she thinks, suddenly. As honest and plainspoken.

She hates it. And she _really_ hates how easily Laurel can get under her skin, by doing almost nothing at all.

“I’m not-” Her voice catches in her throat. Laurel is drawing closer. Her lips have never looked so delectable, covered in a thin sheen of sparkly lip gloss, and she wonders what flavor it is, wonders how it would feel on _her_ lips. “I am not going to kiss you.”

Laurel feigns confusion, but there’s a coyness to it; a teasing lilt. “You’re not?”

She’s so close it’s almost unbearable, so close it’s torture to resist touching her. There’s no point in trying to stamp down these feelings, now; Michaela’s good at pretending, but she’s not _that_ good, and she’s sure the look of blatant desire is written all over her face, plain as day.  

“Oh, God,” Michaela finally says, voice breaking off into a whine. “Yes I am.”

Michaela may be complicit in multiple homicides and a veritable smorgasbord of other felonies, but she’s not a liar – not a good one, anyway. So she does as she says, and leans forward, pressing her lips down on Laurel’s, tentatively at first; close-mouthed, slow. She breaks away after that brief initial peck, eyeing Laurel, her brain whirring out of control like an overheating engine. Every synapse is misfiring, short-circuiting. The air between them is full of static.

She feels numb, tingly. She feels so alive and awake that it’s almost painful.

And _wow_ does kissing Laurel feel ten times better sober.

“We’re gonna do this again,” she pants, breathless, “aren’t we?”

Laurel’s only answer is a kiss – and this time it’s not slow or chaste or cautious; it’s deep, demanding, her tongue requesting entry and making it clear she should, under no circumstances, deny it. So Michaela doesn’t. If she had much willpower to begin with it’s most certainly gone by now, and before she can comprehend what’s happening Laurel is urging her over to the bed, falling back on it and tugging Michaela down on top of her. It’s a flurry of groping hands and saliva and colliding mouths, and before she can help herself Michaela is hiking her sweater dress up, so that her panties are pressed down on Laurel’s thigh, the indirect stimulation almost enough to drive her off the deep end. The other girl sits up without warning, yanking her down into another kiss, before Michaela pulls away and stares at her, hypnotized and terrified all at once.

“Talk me out of this,” she tells her, as Laurel’s lips go for her neck. She settles herself down onto her lap, straddling her, and even like this, even though she can tell they’re past the point of no return, some teeny tiny part of her subconscious is still alive and kicking, still wagging its little fist in disapproval. She shakes her head, a soft whimper escaping her lips as she grinds down against Laurel’s thigh, desperate for friction. “Oh, fuck, please talk me out of this, Laurel.”

“Fine. You want me to talk you out of this?” Laurel continues kissing at her neck, murmuring the words against her skin. “Because… when I’m done with you, you won’t be able to remember your own name. You won’t be able to walk, feel your legs, speak… You’ll be ruined, for anyone else. Ever again.”

Michaela holds back her moan, her eyelids fluttering shut, her body surrendering itself to its instincts and silencing that last tiny inhibition, the last scrap of reason in her. She’s lost; one hundred percent gone, so wet she almost drips, so wet she can’t sit still, and Laurel’s dirty talk… Fucking hell, it almost legitimately kills her. She swears she can’t breathe, and Laurel hasn’t even really touched her yet beyond the hand on the small of her back, holding her in place, anchoring her to her body.

God. _God_ , she’s starting to think she might have to change her Biannual Freakout to her Bi _sexual_ Freakout.

“We can’t do this,” she manages to blurt out, as Laurel tries to pull her in for another kiss. “The door isn’t locked, and, oh, my God-”

Finally, that tiny, minute detail snaps her out of it. The door. It isn’t locked. Anyone could walk in here at any time and see them – Connor or Wes or Bonnie or, worst of all, _Annalise_. They’d be finished. Actually finished. And as soon as Michaela remembers that, and foresees them getting fired, and the subsequent ruination of her future and every single one of her aspirations, she tenses, the reality of the outside world slamming into her like a wall. Caleb. Her boyfriend. Frank. Laurel’s ex-boyfriend. He’s right downstairs. Everyone is. They can’t do this. _She_ can’t do this.

Well – she _can_. She wants to, and Michaela has spent what feels like her whole life wanting things she can’t have, and she’s never wanted anything more than this, than her. And now, she can have her; Laurel is right here beneath her, looking up at her with eyes full to the brim with desire. And she _can_. She wants to.

But something stops her.

So Michaela tears herself away without warning and scampers off of her lap, breathing heavily and wiping her mouth off with the back of her hand. Her legs are trembling, so weak she’s sure they’re about to collapse – and Laurel is just looking at her, wide-eyed, cheeks flushed, lip gloss smudged, the most delicious sight Michaela thinks she’s ever seen.   

“No,” she makes herself say, shaking her head and rubbing her thighs together, trying to stem the flow of desire between them. “We can’t do this.”

Laurel doesn’t say a word. She’s always been quiet; a woman of few words. She isn’t speaking now, but Michaela can read the disappointment in her eyes, can see the way she shifts on the bed, pressing her legs together too and swallowing, hard.

Finally, she manages to choke out, “Michaela-”

“Caleb is missing. And I’m…” She pauses, catching her breath. “I-I’m a murderer, maybe, but I’m not a cheater. And you and Frank – _God_ , you _just_ broke up two seconds ago-”

“Michaela-”

“This… isn’t happening,” Michaela finally declares, not even semi-convincingly. She raises her chin, and does an awkward little shimmy-dance to tug her dress back down. “I have to go.”

It takes every scrap of willpower in her in that instant to turn and make herself walk out the door – but Michaela is nothing if not strong-willed, and so she does it, no matter that she’s so wet that even the soft motion of her thighs brushing against each other as she walks makes her squirm; no matter that she leaves Laurel behind, and watches the other girl fall back onto the bed with a quiet whine of frustration as she goes.

She’d never really gotten the whole blue balls thing guys always talk about, which Aiden would always complain about when she’d stop him, pull away, insist she had to go to class or study and didn’t have time to have sex.

Apparently, that was only true before Laurel. Now?

Now, Michaela really fucking gets it.

 

~

 

The news that Caleb is informing on Annalise is, admittedly, a more-than-effective buzzkill.

Her Biannual/Bisexual Freakout shifts into hyper-drive as soon as she sees his face on the fuzzy police station surveillance camera Oliver manages to hack into. She calls Annalise in whichever one-horse town she’s run off to in Tennessee, speaking a mile a minute, frantic and panicked – and all she has to say in reply is that she ‘knows how to handle this,’ hanging up before Michaela can ask what that means.

The rest of the afternoon into the evening feels like one long panic attack to Michaela. Laurel hovers near her almost constantly, looking like she wants to comfort her but never daring to get very close. Connor and Oliver sneak off somewhere, no doubt to bang it out one last time before the police come for all of them and lock them up for good. Frank has assumed his typical tough-guy stance, arms folded, leaning against the doorway as Bonnie paces around next to him, dialing numbers on her phone madly.

It’s half past eight, and they’re huddled around the television when Bonnie puts down her phone, walks into the living room with sudden purpose, and switches the news on.

“ _After a two-week manhunt, police have located alleged murder suspect Philip Jessup right here in Philadelphia. Sources say Jessup contacted police himself, claiming he had new information about the Hapstall murders; some of which has now led police to once again look at Caleb Hapstall as the prime suspect in this case_ …”

Michaela stops listening, after that. The words blur together, unintelligible and distant. She feels like the walls are boxing her in, closing in on her; the whole _building_ feels like it’s about to collapse inside itself and crush her. The room is too hot. It’s too small in here, too cramped and she can’t move, God, she can’t breathe…

“Hey,” Laurel approaches her, coming to stand at her side and keeping her voice low so the others won’t hear. “You okay?”

“No,” is all she mutters, not tearing her eyes from the picture of Caleb, his bright, innocuous smile beaming back at her; bright and charming and looking nothing like a monster at all. She sucks in a breath, folding her arms. “No.”

Normally, Michaela wouldn’t admit that aloud unless she had a gun to her head. She feels stupid and pathetic, being anything less than strong – but Caleb is a killer. Her boyfriend is a killer. He’d been as smooth and slimy as a snake, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, touching her so gently with those hands that had done such unspeakable things. Almost everyone she knows these days is a murderer, and she’d been so sure Caleb was different, better. She’d believed in his innocence, been so sure, _so sure_.

And if there was ever a time to not be okay, to be less than strong for once in her life, Michaela figures it’s right about now.


	10. X

Bonnie kicks them all out not even halfway through the news report about Caleb – even Frank, perplexingly enough.

She says something about Annalise running away to escape their annoying faces, and how she’s sure as hell not going to want to see them first thing when she gets back – and Laurel doesn’t blame her for that, not really. She’s more worried about how Michaela is doing than anything else, after the news about Caleb, but the other girl ignores her when she tries to talk to her, all hunched in on herself, like she wants nothing more than to disappear into thin air. She scurries out the door as soon as Bonnie tells them to go, vanishing before Laurel can say a word to her.  

So, feeling lost and out of sorts and not really sure what to do with herself, Laurel heads to Frank’s.

It’s like she’s on autopilot, the location programmed into her internal GPS; she almost doesn’t realize where she’s going until she’s already halfway there. His apartment had become her safe haven these past few months, and as much as she’s trying to assign her _own_ apartment as her new safe haven, she hasn’t had much luck detaching herself. There’s been something off about Frank the past few days ever since Annalise left, too; more than him keeping some trivial secret from them, or working on another top-secret undercover mission. Something really, gravely wrong, something sinister, and Laurel hates herself for it a little bit, maybe, but she’s worried about him.

As it turns out, as is usually the case, her instincts are right.

His front door is ajar when she gets there, a faint golden light pouring in through the crack. She furrows her brow, immediately concerned – because Frank has never, not once during the time she’s known him, left his door open like this, not even for her.

“Frank?” she calls out.

The only answer she gets is the reverberation of her own voice down the hallway. Gulping, she pushes in the door and steps inside, not entirely sure what she expects to find; Frank standing at the stove making dinner, maybe, wearing that stupid apron of his she’d mocked him for relentlessly – but he isn’t. He’s not in the living area or the kitchenette at all. The whole apartment is eerily silent and still, the only sound to be heard the faint creaking of her footsteps on the hardwood. Nothing is knocked over or broken, and nothing seems to be missing, either. Everything is perfectly in place; his paintings hanging straight, his bar fully stocked, even a dishrag still slung over the handle on the oven door.

Someone hadn’t broken in.

That’s a conclusion Laurel can draw fairly confidently, and it makes her frown even deeper as she ventures further back, down the hallway and into Frank’s bedroom – empty too. The sheets on the bed are rumpled, but that isn’t unusual; he’d never bothered to make them. She peers around for a while, cataloguing each individual item and trying to notice if anything is out of place – when suddenly, a light in the distance catches her eye.

The bathroom.

Oh, God. _Oh God, no, no, no._

“Frank? Hello?”

Her heart is in her throat, her stomach roiling with dread, time itself slowing and warping around her. She makes her way over to it numbly, as if in a trance, her limbs feeling heavy and cold, and slowly, very slowly, pushes the door open, terrified of what she’ll find on the other side. Frank dead. Wrists slit. Bleeding out. She’d said she hadn’t loved him. She hadn’t meant to hurt him – not that badly, and whatever had happened with Annalise… If he’d gone off the deep end…

Finally, the door swings open enough to reveal the entirety of the room, all beige tile and gleaming porcelain, and as empty as the rest of the place, which had once been filled with laughter and happy memories and now lays deserted, haunted. Bewildered, Laurel steps outside and paces around for a while, until her eyes fall on the closet. It’s empty too when she peers inside, all of Frank’s clothing gone. Every scrap of it. Everything. It’s gone.

_He’s_ gone.

She’s scared. Terrified. Already she’s worrying herself sick, and the fact that she is only makes her feel sicker, because she knows who Frank is, now. She knows perfectly well what he’s done. Knows the _Real Him_ – not the one he’d wanted her to get to know, maybe, but the Real Him all the same. And even now, even after all that, she doesn’t hate him, and _God_ , what does that say about her, really? That she can be lied to a million times, fall in love with a killer, and still care about him? She doesn’t want to be that kind of person; a bad person, like her father, though part of her knows she already is: a murderer, a liar, a cheater; corrupted past the point of return, her moral high ground crumbled beneath her feet, and The Michaela Situation, as she’s come to codename this _thing_ , whatever it is, with Michaela, only muddles things even more.

She can’t breathe here, suddenly. She needs to leave. She needs to _get out_. Maybe Frank had had the right idea after all: running away, getting the hell away from everyone in the office – in this whole _city_.  

The sound of her phone buzzing in her pocket stirs her from that thought, and she pulls it out as she stalks back into the living room, holding it up.

_1 New Message From: Connor_

_-Turn on the news_

Laurel frowns, tapping out a reply.

_-Why?_

_-Just do it. Channel 9_

She rolls her eyes. Now is _really_ not a good time for Connor to be frustratingly vague, not when she’s exhausted and just about at her wit’s end, but Laurel doesn’t waste time demanding an explanation; she just reaches for the remote and switches on Frank’s television, dialing through the channels until she finds the news.

The instant she does, and finds Caleb Hapstall’s picture staring back at her with that deceptively handsome smirk of this, Laurel understands.

It’s an aerial view of some building from a news helicopter – a hotel, she thinks, though it’s difficult to see in the darkness. ‘Broadcasting live’ blinks up in the top right-hand corner, as the news anchor’s steady, measured voice fades gradually into Laurel’s consciousness.

“… _We are just now getting confirmation from police that a man’s body was found in a room at the Gardener Inn and Suites in Devon tonight, just outside the city. A few hours ago, police were reportedly able to trace Caleb Hapstall’s location to this same hotel, and although no further details have been given at this time, the likelihood is that the manhunt for the alleged murder suspect has come to an end, only hours after it began. The police have not issued a positive ID or cause of death, but_ -”

Laurel switches the television off just then, watching as the picture flickers and fades. She’s gotten so used to death and murder that she hardly bats an eye at the news; she’d suspected all along something was up with Caleb, though she’s sure as hell not about to spout any I-told-you-so’s now.

No. Michaela. Michaela is all she can think about. She needs to go to her. She can’t be taking this well. Granted, Michaela doesn’t take _any_ kind of bad news well, but this, what she’s found out today… It’s the worst kind of betrayal; a kind of betrayal Laurel is far too familiar with, herself.

Mark that down as one more thing they have in common. Falling in love with killers.

 

~

 

_Knock knock knock knock._

Four short, quick raps.

Laurel waits a moment, staring at the gold metal ‘39A’ on Michaela’s door for a moment, before sighing and calling out.

“Michaela?”

Still, nothing.

Laurel places a hand against the door, leaning forward and bowing her head. She knows Michaela must be here; she has no one else to run to, no family, no other friends outside of their twisted little fraternity of felons.  

“Michaela, I know you’re in there. It’s Laurel. Open up.”

Not that she needs to clarify who she is – she’s sure Michaela knows. That is probably, now that she thinks about it, one of the reasons she _isn’t_ coming to the door. Under normal circumstances, Laurel would get the hint and leave, but she can’t, not now, because somewhere along the line, for some reason, she developed an incessant need to take care of everyone in her life like a mother hen. Wes. Frank. Now Michaela.

It’s fucking exhausting, honestly.

But Laurel shakes the thought away and glances down at her feet, finding a red doormat there, welcoming her with faded, dirt-caked lettering. She bends down and peels it up, and sure enough, there’s a little silver spare key beneath it, glinting in the moonlight. She has the door unlocked in seconds, and nudges it open gently as she slips in, so as to not spook Michaela. It takes her eyes a minute to acclimate to the darkness – because for a moment that’s all she can see in her apartment: darkness, illuminated only by a lamp next to the couch where Michaela sits, her back turned to her, hunched forward, wrapped in a blanket and looking at something. Laurel furrows her brow, closing the door behind her and approaching slowly, her footfalls almost silent on the carpet.

“Michaela?” she says, her voice hardly more than a whisper, so soft she doesn’t even know if the other girl will hear.

Michaela jumps at the sound, and glances back at her, sniffling. The moment she does, Laurel notices the tears shining on her cheeks, the puffy redness around her eyes, and she melts, her shoulders slumping. She drops her bag on the ground, fighting the urge to go to her but waiting for some kind of tacit permission – because she’s only never seen Michaela Pratt cry, _really_ cry, once before, and she can’t be sure if she’s going to retreat back into her shell and order her away.

Finally, Michaela turns her head back to look at whatever she’d been staring at before, and sniffs, the sound thick with mucus, like she’s been crying for hours.

“I should’ve known…” she mutters, voice cracking. “I-”

A harsh sob cuts her off, rattling through her chest so hard that Laurel can feel it in her bones from across the room. Taking that as her sign to come closer, she does, sinking down onto the couch beside her; not too close, still gauging Michaela’s comfort level as she is, but close enough. And when she does, Laurel sees what she’s looking at: the crime scene photos from the Hapstall’s, laid out in rows on her coffee table. The bodies, tied up, with gunshots to the head. Tortured. Executed. There’s so much blood that it almost doesn’t look real, like a gory horror film. There’s a photo of Helena Hapstall, too. Sitting in her car seat. Throat slit. Eyes staring lifelessly into the abyss.

“Do you know what he did to them?” Michaela asks, wiping at her cheeks like somehow she’ll be able to hide the tears there. “Before they died? He carved them up with knives. Cut off their fingers. Tortured them. He… They had to’ve been alive for hours, and he did this to them, treated them like… animals, God…”

Laurel presses her lips into a grim line. “Where’d you get these?”

“Annalise’s files,” comes her shaky reply, and Laurel sighs, rising to her feet and collecting them up into a pile.

“You shouldn’t be doing this to yourself.”

Michaela shakes her head, as Laurel slides the pictures back into the manila folder resting beside them and takes a seat again. “I should’ve known… something was wrong with him. I should’ve _realized_ -”

“Hey,” Laurel soothes, scooting closer and angling her body toward her. “Nobody could’ve known. _You_ couldn’t have known.”

Michaela lowers her eyes. “I should’ve known the second he showed me that gun after getting me into his bed. But I didn’t – he… played me, I let him cloud my judgement, a-and I thought, I was _so sure_ -”

“He played us all,” she tells her. She reaches out, cupping Michaela’s cheek and urging her to look at her, so close that Laurel thinks she can see every single solitary line of pain wrought on her features, in her eyes. She pauses, licking her lips and settling on an old, tired line. “It’s okay.”

Michaela shakes her head, fresh tears brimming over her eyelids. “I’m so _stupid_.”

Stupid. Laurel remembers feeling that way. Stupid, after Frank, after he’d told her about Lila. Stupid for not figuring it out, somehow. Stupid for ignoring her gut instinct, when it’d told her so many times that he was dangerous, and not just in a _sexy_ _bad boy_ kind of way. Stupid, for all of it, for being so blind – and the memory ignites a fire inside her, out of nowhere. She sits up, placing her other hand on Michaela’s cheek and looking her square in the eyes, so intensely and so suddenly that it seems to startle her.

“No, you’re not. You’re _not_ stupid. You’re not stupid for believing him,” she almost bites the words out, her own anger rising up and taking control of her tongue. “He… lied to you, made you think he was a _good guy_ , played you over, and over, and you didn’t see it because you cared about him – because maybe you didn’t want to see it. But that isn’t your fault; it’s his. _He’s_ the monster.”

For a moment Michaela looks startled by her firmness, and so Laurel lowers her voice slightly, tucking a strand of hair behind one of her ears.

“So you’re not stupid,” she murmurs, again. “Don’t ever think that.”

Slowly, unsurely, Michaela nods. Laurel doesn’t release her or back off; she just holds her face, staring into her eyes, feeling so furious and sad for Michaela right then that she half-wants to burst into tears too.

“He’s dead,” Michaela remarks. She lowers her eyes once more, and finally Laurel lets go of her, backing off. “Did you see the news? They… don’t have a positive ID or anything yet, but-”

Laurel nods. “Yeah. I saw.”

“I really thought he was different. I thought, maybe… we could have something. _Be_ something. Together.” Michaela sucks in a breath, seeming to calm down for a second before her face crumples again. “I just want somebody to love me – I-I don’t know why that’s so hard…”

The words break Laurel’s heart, and she pulls her closer, tugging her head down onto her shoulder and letting Michaela curl up against her as she cries, her tears dampening her jacket.

“Michaela…” She drifts off, and reaches a hand up to stroke her hair, as her sobs fade to sniffles and then to quiet hiccups. Laurel presses a kiss to her forehead, almost without thinking. “Don’t cry, please don’t cry, _shh_ …”

It’s a while before Michaela goes silent and stills against her chest, and it’s only then that Laurel moves back slightly, glancing down at her.

“For what it's worth,” she says softly, a little grin on her lips, “ _I_ love you.” Michaela frowns, at that. Laurel’s grin grows just a bit wider. “What? You already told me you loved me. So, I love you too.”

That actually gets a watery laugh out of Michaela, and she sits up, sniffling. “I hate you.”

They’re silent, for a moment, the quiet settling over them lightly, without any particular burden to fill it. Then, Michaela shakes her head.

“God, I have ridiculously awful taste in men. Aiden. Levi. Now… Caleb. A gay man, a drug dealer, and a murderer. I’m 0 for three.”

“Yeah, well. Guess shitty taste in boyfriends is something we have in common,” Laurel jokes, half-heatedly. “Maybe it’s a divine message that we just should give up guys altogether.”

Michaela gives her a look, and reaches for a tissue to dab at her cheeks. “You wish.”

Laurel smiles, but it fades after a moment, as she watches Michaela dry her cheeks and blow her nose. She hadn’t meant the ‘I love you’ – at least not in that way. Love isn’t the right word to describe what bonds them together, but she thinks right then, as she takes in the sight of the other girl before her, that maybe she _could_ love Michaela like she wants to be loved, one day. It’s an unbidden thought, floating up from the depths of her subconscious, and she puts it out of her mind immediately, confused but not at all unsettled by it.

Tonight isn’t the time for that. Tonight, all she can do is… be here. Her being here, her presence, is all she can offer. And maybe, hopefully, her being here is somehow enough.

“You’re good at that, y’know,” Michaela tells her as she settles back against the couch, tugging her blanket tighter around her arms and curling up at the other end of the couch. “Comforting people. Maybe you should be a shrink.”

“And what, give up now? Have covered up all these murders for nothing?”

Michaela grins, but it’s half-hearted and fails to reach her eyes. “Fair enough.”

Another minute of silence passes. Again, Michaela breaks it.

“He got what he deserved,” she remarks, jaw clenched, eyes like embers. “I-I’m glad he’s…”

_Glad he’s dead_. Laurel doesn’t have to look close to know that’s a lie; the same lie she’d told herself countless times, after Frank. That she was happy they were over. Happy to be free of him – when she wasn’t, not at all, and Michaela can lie to her and herself however many times she wants, but Laurel knows she’s not glad he’s dead, no matter how hard she tries to convince herself otherwise.  

“Let’s not talk about that anymore, okay?” Laurel suggests. They’re silent again for a while, just sitting side by side, comforted by the other’s presence, until Laurel clears her throat and glances at the clock. “I, uh, I can go, if you want.”

But Michaela shakes her head, then pauses, as if contemplating something, before inching her way over to her on the couch, so close that theirs arms brush.

“No,” she says, shaking her head. “Will you… Will you stay? I just… I don’t wanna be alone, tonight.”

Laurel nods, and smiles for her. “’Course.”

Michaela’s head ends up back on her shoulder not long after, her body cuddled up at her side. Laurel’s hand ends up back in her hair, stroking it tenderly, holding her close without a word. And if Laurel’s lips end up on hers once or twice, kissing them and then kissing the tears off her cheeks, then surely it’s just some kind of accident; not intentional by any means.


	11. XI

It’s the smell of something cooking, followed by the gnawing pang of hunger in her stomach, that rouses Michaela.

It takes her a moment to figure out where she is – on her couch, in her apartment, with the sunlight pouring in through the windows behind her television and stabbing her in the eyes. Someone is cooking breakfast, _actually_ cooking, her apartment filled with a sweet, vanilla aroma, a smell she hasn’t smelled in God knows how long. Aiden used to cook for her, whenever he was feeling particularly chivalrous or needed to make it up to her after a fight, but ever since then she’s been subsisting mainly off cereal, coffee, takeout, and the occasional microwave Hot Pocket; filled with preservatives and processed meat-substitutes and God knows what other carcinogens that’ll probably kill her in thirty years, but delicious nonetheless.

But this… _This_ smell she can’t compare to even the most delicious Hot Pocket.

Yawning, she pokes her head up over the couch and peers into the kitchenette, finding Laurel standing in front of the stove, illuminated from the side by the sunlight in a way that makes her the outline of her silhouette shimmer gold – and in a way that very briefly makes Michaela’s breath hitch. She’s wearing what looks like one of her old t-shirts and a pair of her athletic shorts, hair damp from a shower. For a flicker of a second she has no clue why the other girl is here, but then the events of last night rush back to her in one long, unpleasant, weepy deluge. She’d made a fool of herself, as she’s become prone to doing lately, apparently. Granted, finding out her boyfriend is/was a murderer is a pretty good excuse.

But still.

“You stayed all night?” she croaks, voice raspy.

Laurel turns to look at her, spatula in hand. “Good morning to you too. And yeah, I did. You asked me to, so.”

“What’re you making?”

“Pancakes,” she answers, sounding far too chipper for this early in the morning. “Chocolate chip. The fluffiest you’ll ever have. _And_ the best, if I do say so myself.”

Michaela blinks, staring at the ingredients piled on her counter; half of which she knows for sure she didn’t buy, because grocery shopping – along with just about every other normal human task – is just about last on her list of priorities, right now.

“You went to the store?”

“I had to. All you had was leftover takeout and a couple Hot Pockets – which are disgusting, by the way.”

Michaela rubs her eyes, still puffy and swollen from crying last night, and stands, wincing at the crick in her neck. She makes her way over to the counter and comes to a stop on the other side of it, watching Laurel with her hands on her hips.

“You’ve really made yourself at home,” she says, feigning irritation, when really the sight of Laurel cooking her breakfast and wearing her clothes is… not unwelcome. Not at all.

Laurel shrugs, flipping one of her pancakes and acting flippant as ever. “You were my uninvited houseguest for a week. I figured you owe me one.”

“Are those my clothes?”

“Mmm hmm.” Laurel nods. She glances back at her, and gives her a mischievous grin. “What? If we’re _dating_ now and everything…”

She’s joking, probably, but the words crawl under Michaela’s skin and make her shiver, in a way that she’s trying to convince herself is disgust but is actually something more along the lines of… She doesn’t know, exactly. Can’t pin down the feeling. But it’s not bad.

Not bad at all.

Michaela rolls her eyes anyway, making her way over to the fridge and grabbing a half-empty jug of orange juice. “In your dreams.”

“Fine. I’ll have to settle for just being gal pals,” Laurel teases, and pops one of her extra chocolate chips into her mouth, then offers a handful to her. “Want some?”

Michaela hesitates, giving her a suspicious look, before caving and holding out her palm. Laurel dumps the pieces into her hand, a few tumbling onto the floor in the process, which Laurel quickly stoops down to pick up and tosses in her mouth, too.

Michaela grimaces. “Did you just eat those off the floor?”

Laurel’s grin is cheeky, and slightly chocolatey. “Five second rule, right?”

“Uh, you grew up with billionaire parents and silver spoon in your mouth. I doubt you ever had to eat off the floor as a kid.”

Laurel scoffs, scooping the last of the pancakes onto a plate and bringing it over to the little table in her sunny breakfast nook, where Michaela has taken a seat.

“What, and you did?”

Michaela is silent, at that. It’s a conspicuous silence, and Laurel seems to notice that she’s struck a chord because she doesn’t press, retreating into the kitchen instead, fishing around in the drawers for some utensils, then returning and plonking down in the chair across from her.  

“Bon appetit,” she says, and plops a stack of four pancakes onto her plate, pouring a veritable flood of syrup on top of them and digging in.

Michaela doesn’t waste any time following suit. She almost can’t remember the last time she ate anything, cramming a granola bar down her throat for lunch yesterday and then skipping dinner last night, after the news about Caleb – God, _Caleb_. The instant he worms his way back into her thoughts her mostly happy morning goes sour, and so she resolves to stuff her face with pancakes to distract herself – which, as it turns out, with Laurel’s orgasmic pancake recipe, is absolutely the solution.

“Oh my God,” she manages to say, after she’s swallowed her first sugary, downright diabetes-inducing bite. “Oh my _God_ , this is like heaven.”

Laurel grins. “Told ya.”

“Ugh,” she almost groans aloud in satisfaction. “I can’t remember the last time I had a real meal that wasn’t-”

“-a Hot Pocket?” Laurel finishes for her.

Michaela makes herself glower, but only a little. “Say what you will about Hot Pockets. I like them. Not as much as these, though.”

Laurel makes a muffled sound of satisfaction at that, her mouth full of pancake, and takes a sip of her coffee. Michaela sighs contently and does the same, watching Laurel without a word, more closely than she normally would. She looks happy enough, but there are faint lines of worry creasing her forehead as she chews, a flicker of distance in her eyes that isn’t usually there. Every now and then, as they eat in silence, she frowns, just a faint, barely detectable downward tugging of her lips, and Michaela has become familiar enough with Laurel’s mannerisms recently to know that means something’s up.

“You okay?” she asks, voice gentle, not demanding, not anything like it usually is.

Laurel blinks, like she’s surprised by her intuition, before nodding and stuffing another forkful of pancake into her mouth. “Uh, yeah. I’m… fine.”

Michaela considers pressing, briefly, but determines it’s better to leave her be if she doesn’t want to talk about it; a favor Laurel has done her too many times to count, recently. They eat in relative silence for another minute, the only sound to be heard the scraping of their forks on their plate – and it occurs to Michaela, out of the blue, that she can’t remember the last time she did this; something normal. Something regular, functioning members of society do. She never feels normal when she’s with the others, even Connor; there’s always that distant, tiny nagging voice, that invisible hand tugging at her pant leg, reminding her what she’s done, who she’s become – hell, maybe who she’s _always_ been, deep down somewhere. But with Laurel…

She feels normal somehow, with Laurel. She feels like a person. And she’d forgotten how nice that feels.

“It feels nice, y’know,” she echoes the sentiment aloud. “To be normal for once.”

Laurel looks skeptical. “You really think we’re normal if we have to mention how good it feels to be normal?”

Michaela can’t argue with that; it’s a good point, and it dims her contentment a little, but she shakes it off, letting silence settle over them like a layer of calm. It’s Laurel who speaks up this time, setting down her coffee in one swift, suddenly determined motion and pressing her lips into a line.

“We need to talk. About what happened, at the bar. And yesterday.”

“I’m not ready,” she blurts out, a bit too quickly, a bit of a lie. “To… be with anyone else, I mean. After Aiden, Levi, Caleb, I just…”

Something flashes behind Laurel’s eyes. Disappointment, maybe, she thinks, but the look is there and gone as soon as it appears, and Laurel nods understandingly.

“I get it. You’ve been… chasing relationship after relationship. Forgetting to take care of yourself.” She pauses, lowering her eyes to her plate. “You need time, to be alone with yourself. I do too, probably, if I knew what was good for me.”

 _Which I don’t_ , she imagines Laurel saying. And Michaela’s pretty damn sure she doesn’t, either, if her recent string of increasingly bad decisions is any indication.

She isn’t sure she _wants_ to know what’s good for her anymore, though. Not if Laurel isn’t.

“Look, I-I’m not saying never,” Michaela blurts out. “I’m not saying no. But I have… things, I need to figure out.”

Things. That’s sufficiently vague. _Things_ , like her sexuality, stubborn, confusing, elusive thing that it is. _Things_ , like the finals and schoolwork and stress that’s about to come avalanching down on her in a few weeks’ time. _Things,_ like getting a summer internship. _Things_ , like how the hell to get over Caleb, and resume some semblance of normalcy in her day to day life.

So, yes. _Things._

“Yeah. I do too,” Laurel agrees, with that same dimness in her eyes. She shakes it off, though, and sits up straight, reaching for her coffee. “But whatever. Who even has time for sex with all the murder these days anyway?”

Michaela snorts into her orange juice. “We seem to make more than enough time.”

There’s a long pause; semi-awkward, with tension in the air, not thick enough to cut with a knife but too thick to ignore. Clearly neither of them knows what to say, but Laurel ends it by meeting her eyes and giving her the tiniest of grins.

“So,” she says, finally. “Friends?”

Michaela likes the sound of that. _Friends_. She really does. She hasn’t made one single solitary real friend this year, excluding Connor and maybe Oliver and the rest of the group, who she was more or less forced to become friends with for the sake of survival. So – friends. Yeah. She can be Laurel’s friend. Normal human beings have friends. She’s Laurel’s _friend_.

Micaela likes the sound of that – she really does. But she can’t ignore how empty the word feels, like a cop-out, like a safe space she’s too scared to venture beyond. Insufficient _._ Almost good enough… but very discernibly, very much _not_ enough.

Michaela makes herself nod anyway. “Friends.”

 “… Gal pals?” Laurel tacks on after a moment, her smirk widening.

Michaela just rolls her eyes good-naturedly and grabs her plate, getting to her feet. “Don’t push it.”

Laurel laughs softly and helps her clear the table. She washes the dishes, and Michaela dries them, all the while trying to ignore that same twinge of disappointment in her stomach, that tiny, irksome feeling of dissatisfaction, of wanting more. All her life she’s wanted more, never content with what she had. If she got an A, she wanted an A+. If she was salutatorian, she wanted to be valedictorian. If she was ranked sixth in her class, she wanted to be fifth. No matter how high she’d climbed she always wanted to go higher; as long as there was someone above her, all that mattered was ascending to their spot. Never enough. _Nothing_ is ever enough.

 _Friend_ isn’t enough for her, either. But the idea of anything more scares Michaela, contradicts every single vision she’d had of what her very straight, very cookie-cutter future would be like: the standard husband, 2.5 kids, and a white picket fence – surrounding a mansion, of course, with a butler and gardener and several cleaning ladies.

She’s stuck between a Laurel Castillo and a hard place. And it sucks.

After they finish the dishes, Laurel makes her way over to her bag on the floor by the couch and pulls out her phone to check it. She hadn’t looked at it once last night, not even a glance; she’d held her and comforted her and kissed the tears off her cheeks until she fell asleep, like she was the only girl in the world. The thought serves as a pleasant distraction for a while, until she notices Laurel frown and bring her phone up to her ear.

“Wes? Hey, I got your messages,” she says, suddenly, and Michaela stops what she’s doing across the room to watch. “Wait – what do you mean he’s dead? _Who’s_ dead? Slow down, I can’t-” A pause. Michaela inches closer, but hangs back. Laurel exhales sharply, shaking her head. “Where are you? I’ll come over.” Another pause. Laurel nods. “Yeah, okay. I, uh, I’ll be there in ten.”

She hangs up, and Michaela furrows her brow. “What’s going on?”

“That was Wes,” Laurel breathes, going for the bedroom immediately, ostensibly to retrieve her clothes. “His dad was shot.”

“His dad?” Michaela’s eyes widen, as she trails after her into the bedroom. “Wait – what the hell are you talking about? Since when does Wes have a dad?”

“I’ll explain later,” Laurel tells her, tugging off her shorts and t-shirt right in front of Michaela without hesitation and stripping down to her underwear. “I’m going to the office. He said he’s there. I can give you a ride, but we need to go now.”

Michaela blinks, 25% confused by this revelation and 75% distracted by Laurel’s cleavage, until the other girl pulls on her blouse from last night and she snaps out of it.

“Uh, yeah.” She nods, going for her dresser lightning-fast. “Yeah, I’ll be ready in a second.”

‘A second’ is more along the lines of several minutes, during which she throws on some poorly-planned skirt and blouse combination with too many clashing colors to count, wiggles her way into a pair of pantyhose, and sweeps her hair into a sloppy bun – but Laurel doesn’t complain. She just tugs her out the door as soon as she’s done and ushers her down to her car, which she has started and pulled out onto the road in seconds, narrowly avoiding a collision with a silver minivan and then almost rear-ending the SUV in front of them.

It’s only then that Michaela has a moment of relative peace to check her phone, and the instant she does, and sees the dozens of notifications lighting up her screen, she sighs

Twenty-one messages, from Connor. Ten missed calls, also from Connor. Three voicemails, from Connor. One from Oliver, who she’s pretty sure Connor made call her, too. They’re all the same, along the lines of: _Hey, I just saw the news about Caleb. I know I had to run earlier, but if you wanna come over… We, uh, me and Ollie’ve got a shit ton of alcohol. We’re here if you wanna… talk, or something. Just call me. I’m worried about you._

Michaela clenches her jaw, unceremoniously thrust back to the reality of her life as she listens to them one by one, and deletes them with a swift tap of her finger.

So much for her nice, quiet, _normal_ morning.

 

~

 

Michaela discovers three things when they arrive at the office.

One: Wes’s dad is dead. Laurel goes to him as soon as they get there, sitting beside him on the couch and trying to persuade him to say something, look at her, tell her what happened, but he keeps staring ahead, eyes blank and splatters of blood on his clothes. Michaela thinks she can see him trembling, faintly.

Two: It’s a Saturday, and no one wants to be there. Connor is in sweatpants, sans Oliver for once. Asher looks like he just rolled out of bed, and Bonnie is dressed down like she’s never seen her, in jeans and a t-shirt. Annalise is in her blue silk bathrobe, pacing. Everyone looks mildly irritated, and worried. But mostly irritated.

And three? Frank isn’t there. And Frank is _always_ there.

“Where’s Frank?” she asks, after taking a look around the living room and noticing him conspicuously absent.

Michaela looks to Bonnie, who looks to Annalise, who says only: “Gone.”

“Gone?” Connor echoes. “What do you mean _gone_?”

 _Gone._ Michaela frowns, and looks to Laurel, who has looked away from Wes and gone somewhat tense. “Did you… did you know about this?”

“I… went to his place, last night,” she mutters, and even Wes listens up at that. “He wasn’t there. His front door was open. All his clothes were gone.”

“Wait – why?” Asher jumps in. “Why would he just skip town?”

Michaela lowers her voice, inching closer to Laurel. “Why didn’t you tell me that last night?”

“You were upset about Caleb. I didn’t want to bring it up, and it’s… It’s fine-”

“It’s not _fine_!” Connor exclaims. “Where’d he go? _Why_?”

“He’s gone,” Annalise deadpans, arms folded, cold as ever. Behind her, Bonnie frowns, looking worried but keeping quiet. “That’s all you need to know, Mr. Walsh.”

They all pounce at once.

“Why, though? Does he – does he know something, or… did you _fire_ him?” Michaela sputters. “He wouldn’t just leave.”

“What if it was him?” Wes pipes up, lowly. “Who… killed him? If he… I don’t know why he would, but, if he disappeared at the same time…”

“You have to know something,” Connor accuses, looking at Annalise. “What aren’t you telling us-”

“ _Enough_ ,” Bonnie silences them all, raising her voice and stepping in front of Annalise, though there’s a noticeable film of sadness in her eyes, making them appear bigger than they normally do. “He’s… gone. Whatever reason he had to leave, we have to accept it and move on.”

“But why aren’t you looking for him? _Worrying_ about him?” Connor demands, defiant, taking a step toward Annalise. “What, did you _kill_ him or something? A-are we cutting up and burning his body next?”

Annalise opens her mouth, but Connor keeps going, shaking his head and chuckling darkly and backing away, towards the door. “You know what? No. I’m done. With you, with this – with everything. Frank had the right idea.”

Annalise raises an eyebrow, unfazed. “So what, Mr. Walsh? Are you quitting?”

“You’d murder me if I did, right?” Connor laughs, half-manically. “I know too much. So – for today, yeah, I quit. It’s a fucking Saturday, and I’m gonna go spend it with my boyfriend instead of you people and your constant, crazy-ass problems.”

He goes for the door, and without thinking, Michaela blurts out, “Me too. I’m going home.”

“Me three,” Asher chimes in, and folds his arms. “I was in the middle of a _really_ baller game of GTA V, yo.”

“Really?” Connor quips, stopping in the doorway. By now Annalise has rolled her eyes and strolled away back into the next room with Bonnie, not bothering to stop them. “So mowing down virtual pedestrians with your car is how you get your jollies these days? Makes sense.”

Asher grumbles, muttering something under his breath. Michaela stops in the doorway too, and turns back to look at Laurel, who is still seated next to Wes on the couch, her hand on his arm, forehead creased with worry. He’s gone back to staring off into space, like an empty shell, and as soon as she sees him like that, she knows Laurel won’t leave him.

“Hey,” she says, nonetheless. “You coming?”

Laurel shakes her head. “No. I, uh… I’m gonna stay here, for a while, I think.” _He needs me_ , is what she doesn’t say, but Michaela understands. Of course she does.

She may not get _why_. She has no clue why Laurel hovers over Wes the way she does, like a mother hen – like a mother hen to them _all_. But she knows that she needs to, for whatever reason it is, and so she nods, following Connor out the door and down the driveway to his car. She hops in the passenger seat while Asher takes the backseat, and tolerates his inane babbling until they drop him off at his place, declining his invitation to come inside and join them for a round of GTA.

It’s only after they’re alone, sitting in Asher’s driveway, that Connor glances her way and frowns.

“Hey,” he says, voice low. “You okay?”

Michaela lets out a shaky breath. She’d been okay, earlier, when she’d been alone with Laurel, away from all the chaos and insanity and sheltered in their little bubble – or at least she’d been able to pretend she was. But just going back to the office, seeing Annalise, remembering Caleb…

“If you’d just found out Oliver had killed three people in cold blood, would you be okay?”

“I, uh… Yeah. No, I mean, I know. I just…” He exhales, shaking his head and stumbling over his words. “I want to be sure you’re all right.”

Michaela meets his eyes. “I should’ve known, after he showed me that gun… I should’ve known something was up. That he was too good to be true.”

“Well,” Connor jokes, half-heartedly, and starts the car. “At least you dodged a bullet, huh? Probably actually a literal bullet.”

Coming from anyone else, that would probably sound insensitive as hell – and it does, admittedly. But she’s known Connor long enough to know that his awful jokes are just his attempts to make her feel better, and so she makes herself smile, though it doesn’t reach her eyes.

“Yeah. Guess so.”

“Besides,” he continues, as they pull back out onto the road. “Maybe it’s a sign you should just give up guys altogether. Bat for the other team.”

She snorts. “That’s what Laurel said.”

“Yeah? I always had her pegged as bi. You should totally go for it.”

“Uh, no,” she scoffs, cheering up just a bit. “Look what happened with the last two guys you suggested. You’re the worst matchmaker I’ve ever met.”

“What’s going on with you two, anyway?” Connor asks, suddenly serious.

Michaela freezes. “Why would anything be going on with us?”

He narrows his eyes, looking suspicious. “I just meant… you were staying at her place for like a week. And today you showed up together too. And then you said something about ‘last night.’”

“Yeah, um,” she sputters, her voice squeakier than she wants it to be. “Yeah. She came over when she saw the news about Caleb. Ended up spending the night.”

Connor feigns shock. “So are you… Wait, is she _replacing_ me as your BFF? I thought what we had was special.”

“It’s not like that, okay?”

“Then what’s it like?” A beat. Michaela doesn’t answer, won’t look him in the eyes. Connor seems to realize something just then, irritatingly perceptive as he is. “Wait – are you _actually_ screwing her?”

“What? No!” she shoots back. “ _I’m_ straight. One hundred percent, totally… completely into guys. And penises. A-and not everything has to be gay, all right?”

“Why not though?” he jokes. “You know how much better the world’d be? Gay people don’t start wars. Or enslave people. _Or_ drop bombs.”

“So run for president then,” she quips. “Make that your platform.”

“Maybe I will. Along with upgrading our stars and stripes to a _big_ rainbow. I’ll even pick you as my VP,” he offers, and takes a right, pulling into the parking lot of her apartment complex. He puts the car into park after a moment, and looks sideways at her again, eyebrows raised. “But for real. If there’s something up with you and Laurel, you can tell me.”

“ _Nothing_ is up,” she chirps, making her tone as sickeningly-sweet as she can as she unbuckles her seatbelt. “Thanks for the ride. Enjoy Marathon-Sex-Saturday with Oliver.”

She slams the door behind her, and as soon as it’s closed Connor rolls down the window, calling out, “Believe me, I _will_. And _you_ enjoy Marathon-Sex-Saturday with Laurel. I expect all the filthy, depraved, lady lovin’ deets on Monday.”

Michaela gives him a look of disgust, her upper lip curled into a sneer, and stalks off towards the door to her building, slipping inside and stomping up the stairs to her apartment. She unlocks her door and steps in, tossing her bag down onto her counter and inhaling the cakey smell of the pancakes still lingering lightly in the air. Somehow, in some frustrating way, Laurel is everywhere, always present; she can’t get away from her, or worse – thoughts of her. Memories, of that night, even blurry as they are. She shifts her weight from one leg to another, and takes a glance around her apartment, placing her hands on her hips, raising her chin, and making up her mind.

Today is for her. She has an entire day off. No Annalise. No Laurel. None of the others. She’ll study. Go grocery shopping. Clean, because a grey layer of dust has started to settle over everything, spider webs forming in unused corners. That’s what she’ll do: clean. Being productive soothes her, and so she strides over to one of her closets and pulls out her broom, suddenly determined. She decides to start by tackling the kitchenette; the floor is covered with enough crumbs for an ant to build itself a modestly-sized palace, and ‘insect infestation’ is not really a problem she wants to add to her list of current concerns.

Before she sets about sweeping, however, she switches on the television to occupy herself – and as soon as she does, her grip on the broom weakens, bit by bit, until it lands with a soft _thump_ on the carpet.

Because apparently, like Laurel, she can’t escape Caleb Hapstall, either.

“ _New details are emerging about alleged murderer Caleb Hapstall. Last night police reported discovering a man’s body at the Gardner Inn & Suites in Devon, Pennsylvania, which they later identified as Hapstall, who police issued an arrest warrant for earlier that day. No cause of death has been given, but police do not suspect foul play_-”

Michaela changes the channel, then. Just her luck – there he is again, like a demon she can’t exorcise, this time with the headline _Caleb & Catherine Hapstall: Incestuous Relationship Motive for Killing?_

 _“…Catherine Hapstall today withdrew the alibi she gave her brother Caleb the night their parents were murdered. We have learned from a source close to the investigation that Catherine testified she would visit her brother at night, and though the exact nature of these visits is not clear, it is possible this information gives credence to recent tabloid photos of the two after their parents’ funeral, in which the pair appear to be kissing_ -”

Her eyes prickle with tears. Her skin crawls. She feels stiff as a statue, her blood ice in her veins. Again, jaw clenched, she switches the channel.

“ _Caleb Hapstall was found dead today, concluding a manhunt that spanned three counties, and lasted only hours before his body was found in_ -”

Somehow, Michaela manages to raise her hand and switch off the television with a _click_ , choking down the rising bile in her throat, her cleaning mission all but forgotten. There’s nothing she can do, ever. Nothing to distract herself with. She can run. She can even hide. But she can never truly _get away_ , not really. Not from any of it.

She wants to be numb. That’s all she wants: comfortable numbness. She wants – _needs_ – to stop thinking, because her brain ticks and whirrs and spins at a million miles per second all the time like a supercomputer; she needs to boot down, shut it off, or else she’s going to lose her fucking mind, and crazy is _not_ a good look on her.

So she goes for her kitchen, pulling open a cabinet and grabbing a glass, then reaching for a bottle of whatever liquor she’d stashed away for a rainy day. It may be approximately ten o’ clock in the morning, but it’s five o’ clock somewhere, maybe New Zealand, and she doesn’t care.

Because if she’s learned anything from Annalise Keating, it’s that a fifth of vodka can solve any problem in the world – and right now, that seems like a damn good solution.  


	12. XII

It’s 10:35 at night, and Laurel is only just leaving Wes’s apartment when her phone vibrates in her pocket.

_1 New Message From: Michaela_

_-I ejiewjwer antelope you f_

She stops in her tracks, frowning as she taps out a reply. That’s a drunk text if she’s ever seen one, and instead of being amused, her first instinct, as always, is to be worried – because if Michaela’s drinking right now, she’s grief-drinking, almost certainly with the end goal of blacking out, and the last thing they need right now is someone else dropping dead, this time from alcohol poisoning.

And the last thing she _wants_ is Michaela getting hurt. It catches her off guard how much the thought scares her.

- _Are you okay?_

- _GREY_

_-Great_

_-Are you alone?_

Laurel sighs and makes her way down the stairs, back out to her car, as she waits for Michaela to respond. After spending nearly the entire day comforting Wes and keeping him from doing anything stupid, while simultaneously trying to stop herself from gnawing her fingernails down to bloody stubs with worry over Frank, she’s exhausted to the point of dropping, her limbs like thousand-pound weights. She takes a seat behind the wheel and locks her doors, just in time for her phone to vibrate in the cup holder between the seats again – only this time it isn’t short; it’s long and continuous, signaling a call instead of a text.

She sighs. On one hand, she _really_ doesn’t want to deal with a drunk, babbling Michaela right now. On the other, she wants to check on her – and there it is again, without fail. Her Mother Hen Complex, as she’s come to call it.

So, knowing she doesn’t have much of a choice in the matter, she hits ‘accept’ and holds it up to her ear. “Michaela?”

“Laurelllllll,” Michaela chirps back, slurring her name. There’s noise in the background; music booming, she thinks, the reverberation of the bass making it almost impossible to hear what she’s saying. “How’d you know it was me?”

Laurel runs a hand through her hair, trying not to let her frustration creep into her tone. “Where are you? Are you out somewhere?”

“Bar. And I’m _so_ drunk. _So_ drunk. The drunkest.” Michaela pauses, and hiccups. “But don’t worry about me! There’s a guy here. Brad, or… Ben – or, no, Bobby. And he’s taking me home – because newsflash! _I love penis._ And guys. Big, muscle-y guys. I am… I’m straight as an arrow. A line. Liney line. You know?”

No, Laurel doesn’t exactly _know_ , but she also doesn’t remark on it. Briefly, she envisions how Michaela must look, right now: sitting at some bar, slurring her words and hanging all over her chair and declaring to the world just how much she loves dicks at the top of her lungs. If she weren’t so worried about the apparent ‘Brad-Ben-Bobby’ situation, she’d probably just laugh and hang up on her.

But instead-

“You’re there with a guy?” she asks, a sinister feeling creeping into her gut. “One you just met?”

Michaela scoffs. “Pssh, don’t worry _mom_. I’m an adult; I _know_ about… stranger danger – and he’s _so_ sexy, like… Asher. If Asher was hot. And tall. And… black.”

Laurel exhales sharply, turning her key in the ignition. “Michaela, listen to me. You’re drunk, okay? You can’t go home with a guy you just met.”

“What’s he gonna do, kill me?” Michaela laughs. “Think _I_ know a thing or two about murder.”

She cringes. “God, are you – are you saying this right next to him?”

“I’m in line for the bathroom, silly. But I just wanted to call you, and tell you that-” She hiccups. “Tell you that I’m fine. Don’t worry about me! Caleb who?”

Laurel has a bad feeling about this. Doesn’t know why, just that she _does_ , and so she sighs again.

“Where are you? I’m coming to get you.”

“No! Nononono, I’m _fine_. I gotta go.”

“No – wait, Michaela, don’t-”

The line goes dead with a faint _click_. Biting back a growl of frustration, she redials.

Michaela picks up surprisingly quickly. “What? I’m up next in line, _Laurel_.”

“Which bar are you at?” she asks, her voice not leaving much room for protest.

“Wouldn’t you like to know?”

“ _Which bar_ , Michaela?”

“Yeesh. It’s called… the something Lounge. Blue Lounge. Or – no, Black Lounge. I think… it has the name of a fabric in it. Silk. Velvet?”

Laurel rolls her eyes. “Can you please be more specific?”

“Nuh uh. Stay away. _I’m_ going home with Brandon. And… and guess what? He’s got a penis, so he’s _already_ better in bed than you.”

That’s a low blow – and, almost certainly, Laurel thinks, a false statement. If she wasn’t freaking the fuck out, she’d stew over that for a while, but now is not the time to stew, no sir. Now is the time to extract whatever information she can from this inebriated version of Michaela before she hangs up on her again and lets a guy she just met take her home and potentially do her some sort of bodily harm. She has a bad feeling; a _really_ bad feeling, and if she’s overreacting, mother-henning like she always does, then so be it. Better safe than sorry and the whole nine yards.

“Where is the bar?” Laurel speaks slowly, enunciating every word to make sure she understands and sounding very much like she’s speaking to a three year-old. “Michaela, listen to me. Do you remember where the bar is?”

“Fishtown,” she finally divulges, sounding relatively certain. Laurel gapes.

“You went out drinking _alone_ in Fishtown? Are you crazy?”

“I’m exploring the city. Seeing the sights!” she proclaims. “I’m hanging up now. Toodles. Buh-bye.”

“Hey, Michaela, stay where you are. I’m coming to get you. Whatever you do, don’t-”

Again, the line goes dead before she can finish that sentence, and this time Laurel doesn’t call her back; instead, she consults Google, frantically searching for a bar with the word ‘lounge’ in the name somewhere near Fishtown. Thankfully Michaela’s drunken intel had been sound, and she finds a dive bar called the Black Velvet Lounge, only a ten-minute drive away according to Google Maps. And she’s been living in the city all year, maybe, but still isn’t well acquainted enough to navigate the streets without the aid of her GPS; it’s not like she’s exactly had the time to sightsee, what with all the bodies that’ve needed burying.

So, with the eerily chipper, robotic voice of the Google Maps Lady guiding her, she speeds to the bar, runs two red lights, does potentially the _worst_ parallel parking job in the history of driving, and hops out, sprinting inside.

 

~

 

This is, if Laurel’s being honest, the last place on earth she’d ever expect to find Michaela. She has no idea how she’d even found this place.

It’s an average, run-of-the-mill shitty dive bar, with a layer of smoke hanging like smog in the air and an obnoxious remix of some Billboard Hot 100 song playing over the speakers that no one is dancing to. It’s far from a hip crowd: a mixture of balding middle-aged men, similarly middle-aged women wearing too much makeup and talking too loud, and a few twenty-something’s, mostly sitting in clusters at the tables. It might be an enjoyable enough place if Laurel were less exhausted and not stone-cold sober, but as it stands it just makes her even more exhausted as she wades through the throng of drunk people, her eyes scanning the crowd.

Then, finally, she breaks through the front, and her eyes fall on Michaela, sitting at the bar with a glass in her hand and a guy leaning in close to her, whispering something in her ear. She’s overdressed for this place, in a tight lavender knit dress with a tasteful neckline that hugs her in all the right places, and fuck-me pumps that Laurel has no idea how she can walk in, especially like this. Her heart skips a beat when she sees her, all smudged makeup and messy hair and high-pitched giggles; that kind of last-call drunkenness is always a good look on her. But she doesn’t let herself dwell on that for much longer, and stalks over, wedging herself between the two and turning to Michaela.

“Michaela,” she says, as the other girl’s eyes widen. “I’m here to take you home.”

The guy – around their age, maybe slightly older, and tall and handsome in a slimy way that kind of reminds her of Levi and Frank – throws up his hands, scowling. “Wait – what the fuck? Who is this?”

Laurel ignores him. So does Michaela.

“Laurel, what the _hell_?” she snaps instead, looking half-ready to toss her drink in her face. “I _told_ you not to come here!”

“Yeah, well, I’m not very good at doing what I’m told, so,” she quips, straight-faced. “Come on. Party’s over.”

“Uh – no way!” she declares, and all but shoves Laurel out of the way, rising to her feet and stumbling over to sling an arm around the man’s shoulders. “I’m going home with… Brian? Brent?”

“Brett,” he answers, suspiciously seeming not very drunk at all; in fact, Laurel doesn’t even think he _has_ a drink. He tugs Michaela too close, smirking and speaking with a thick Philly accent that, again, reminds her a bit too much of Frank for comfort. “And yeah, she’s right. What’re you, her little lesbo girlfriend or somethin’?”

Laurel clenches her jaw, and somehow manages to pry Michaela away from him. She raises her chin at the man defiantly once she has her wrangled free, eyes cold. “You’re _not_ taking her home, are we clear?”

He scoffs. “You’re a real fuckin’ bitch, you know that?”

“Laurel…” Michaela mutters, stumbling back against the barstool behind Laurel and going quiet suddenly. “Don’t…”

“What, have you been doing this all night?” Laurel spits, voice low and measured and full of quiet fury. “Buying her drinks until she’s too hammered to stand? And then what’re you planning on doing, huh? Taking her back to your place? Because that, FYI, is rape. She couldn’t consent now even if she wanted to!”

“Laurel…” Michaela tries again from behind her, weaker this time. Still, Laurel doesn’t turn, doesn’t back down; an army of one, like always.

“Hey, she was drunk as hell when I found her.” He smirks. “Besides, why don’t you let the lady decide, huh?”

Michaela raises her voice, somewhat, a noticeable note of urgency in it. “ _Laurel_.”

Finally, she spins around – and that’s when she notices Michaela hunched forward on the barstool, one hand on her head, slumped and looking like she’s having trouble holding herself upright. She goes to her immediately, bending down and trying to get her to look at her, but her eyes are hazy, and they won’t focus; she looks like she can hardly keep them open.

“You okay?” she breathes, brow furrowed. “Are you gonna be sick?”

But Michaela shakes her head, wincing. “No, I just… feel… My head…”

This isn’t _drunk_ , Laurel realizes, her stomach roiling with dread. She looks like she’s about to collapse, her eyes wide and spaced-out, as if she has no clue what’s going on, where she is. No, this isn’t _drunk_. Laurel’s seen this, before.

He’d drugged her.

She turns around in two seconds flat, ready to round on the man and claw his eyes out – but she’s met only with air, and the empty space where he’d been standing behind her. Clearly having classified his mission tonight as unsuccessful, he’d slipped away into the crowd, and Laurel doesn’t waste any time searching for him; she just turns to Michaela again and does her best to hold her up as she slips faster with every passing second, on the verge of falling forward out of her seat.

“Hey. Michaela, can you hear me? I… I think he slipped something in your drink. Can you – can you stand, or-”

Michaela topples forward, just then. Laurel reaches out to catch her before she hits the ground, and the other girl’s weight ends up tugging her down along with her, until they’re both in a heap on the floor and Michaela is sprawled across her, out cold.

It’s then that she starts yelling.

“Hey! _Help_! She’s been drugged – somebody…” She drifts off, panic closing in on her, boxing her in, choking the air from her lungs. By now others at the bar have begun to notice, and a young woman in a black dress next to them pulls out her phone, eyes wide. “Somebody call 911! _Now_!”

The young woman dials, but not many others hear her over the thundering of the bass, and so, breathing hard, Laurel reaches into her pocket and withdraws her own phone, dialing 911 with shaky fingers.

“I, uh… I-I’m at the Black Velvet Lounge, and… a-and my friend, she’s been drugged… some guy slipped something in her drink – you have to… Just get here quick. Hurry. _Please_.”

Her voice breaks on the last word, tears beading hot in her eyes. The operator tells her to stay on the line, to keep her updated, bombarding her with questions: _what does she look like? Is she breathing? Is she responsive?_

Laurel does her best to answer, even if she can barely hear the woman – let alone comprehend the questions, or process anything other than the terror locking up her brain. She just keeps her eyes locked on Michaela’s face, and reaches out to pat her cheek, trying to rouse her back to consciousness but knowing there’s nothing she can do.

“Michaela…” She croaks her name, biting back a sob and swallowing it down even though it aches. A crowd is gathering. People are watching. She doesn’t care, can’t see anyone but her, can’t breathe. “Michaela, please… wake up. Please… be okay. _Please_ be okay, please, wake up…”

So Laurel holds her. Holds her, as the sound of sirens echo in the distance. Holds her, as the paramedics arrive, storming in and pushing the other patrons out of the way. Holds her, until they pry her away and lift her up onto the stretcher, rushing her outside.

She holds her, until she can’t anymore. Holds her, because it’s all she _can_ do.


	13. XIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Still chugging along!! In case you've missed me saying it several times in the comments, I've gotten into the rhythm of updating this every 3-5 days. I've had a few people ask me to update the day after I just posted a new chap and as much as I'd love to do that, these chapters still need revising during that 3-5 day gap. So, just so you know what's going on/what to expect as we move forward!
> 
> Awaaayyyyy we goooooo!

_Beep beep beep beep._

Something is beeping; high-pitched and steady and mechanical. Michaela clings to the sound, desperately. Memorizes the rhythm, replays it in her head. It’s oddly comforting, somehow, because all she can see is darkness. Her eyes aren’t working. Her limbs won’t move. Her head hurts. Her arms, too. But mostly her head.

As a matter of fact, her _everything_ hurts – and when she finally manages to pry her crusty eyelids open, the flood of light, reflecting off the white surfaces around her and making the room glow, only causes her more pain. The second thing she becomes conscious of is, perplexingly enough, an IV in her wrist, which is surrounded by a paper bracelet; a hospital bracelet, identifying her as ‘Michaela Pratt.’ So that’s good – at least she knows her name, for sure. But…

Fuck. _Fuck_ , how the _hell_ did she end up in a hospital last night?

Well – she has the slightest inkling that it may have something to do with the headache building behind her eyes, like her skull is about to split in half, and the fact that she feels like she was run over by a train, then a bus, then trampled by a heard of wildebeests, dragged through the sewers, eaten, chewed up, and spat back out into this miserable world, all over the course of one night.

For one irrational moment, she wonders if she’s dead; it just figures she’d end up in purgatory, in this unforgiving white box. At least this isn’t hell.

But then she looks down, and finds Laurel seated in a chair at her side, clad in her ever-present leather jacket, slumped forward onto the bed, asleep on her arms – and she knows she’s alive, and that this can’t be hell, or purgatory, or some weird, fucked-up, far cry from heaven. She has no clue how she ended up here; some sort of alcohol-related stupidity, she figures, but no hangover she’s ever had has felt like this, and she feels groggy; too groggy, and fuzzy.

“Laurel,” she croaks, reaching out to touch her arm, her tongue heavy in her mouth. When the other girl doesn’t stir, she shakes her lightly. “Laurel.”

With a soft, sleepy sound of irritation, Laurel’s eyes flutter open, and she sits up, yawning, then giving her a little grin. She looks flat-out exhausted, more tired than Michaela has ever seen her, with bags under her bloodshot eyes and her hair a veritable rat’s nest, and she’s seen Laurel after pulling an all-nighter at the end of a forty-hour work week.

She doesn’t have to ask to know she’s been here all night with her. Whatever had happened, she’d stayed.

“Hey. You’re up,” she mutters, voice scratchy with sleep. “The doctor said you might be out for a while.”

“ _Out_?” She furrows her brow, and sits up slightly, wincing when she does. “How long was I out? What… what happened?”

Laurel presses her lips into a line. “He… also said you probably wouldn’t remember.”

Michaela scowls. “What the hell happened?”

“You got drunk,” Laurel says, rubbing the sleep out of her eyes and further smearing last night’s mascara up onto her eyelids. “Like, _really_ drunk. You were at a bar, with some guy. Brett. Brent. The cops are looking for him now. He slipped something in your drink. GHB, I think the nurse said.”

Her stomach goes sour, every inch of her skin crawling. _No, no, no, no._

“Oh, no. Oh, God, did he-”

“No. No, no, no he didn’t,” Laurel says, soothingly, shaking her head, and Michaela lets out a trembling breath. “You drunk-dialed me and told me about him. I got there before he could take you home. And then he bolted, and you passed out. I rode here with you in the ambulance here. Told ‘em-” A yawn cuts her off. “I told the paramedics I was family, so they’d let me.”

Michaela manages a scoff, resting her head back against the pillow. “I don’t know if you’ve noticed, Laurel, but I’m black.”

“Family as in… your girlfriend,” Laurel admits, and musters up another weak grin for her. “And _that_ was the saga of last night. You’ve been out for twelve hours, I think. Thirteen. I dunno what time it is.”

A beat. Then, Michaela asks, “Did I, um… did I say anything? Like, while I was…”

“Mmm, not really,” Laurel divulges. “Though you _were_ very adamant about how much you loved penises.”

Michaela cringes, but shakes it off fairly quickly. There are far worse things she could’ve said. Things about them – more specifically, how she _feels_ about them, this thing, whatever it is, friends or not. At least her drunk self had had the good sense to keep that secret locked away and buried deep.

“You stayed here all night?” Michaela asks, changing the subject. “You didn’t have to do that.”

Laurel shrugs, and lays her head back down on her arms, looking up at her with hazy, blue-grey eyes. Her irises seem to have dimmed a bit, leaking their color in her exhaustion. “I wanted to.”

It’s the truth, plain and simple. Laurel doesn’t look puffed up; there’s no bravado about her, no uppity savior complex. She did it because she wanted to, really wanted to, and that’s a revelation Michaela doesn’t quite know how to handle at this point in time; one she’ll file away to ponder at a later date, when her mind isn’t still clouded by whatever drug she’d unwittingly ingested last night.

Michaela opens her mouth to say something, but freezes when she realizes that what’s about to come up is _not_ words, in any way, shape, or form. Her eyes scan the room frantically, and luckily some nurse had had the foresight to supply her with a plastic puke bucket, which she reaches for as fast as she can, places in her lap, and hurls into. Laurel is at her side in seconds, sweeping her hair off her shoulders and holding it back until her stomach settles, and she lets out a sigh, setting the bucket aside.

“Oh, God, look at me,” she laments, as Laurel releases her hair. She wipes her mouth, grimacing at the bitter taste of vomit. “I’m a mess.”

Laurel shrugs again, unfazed. “A hot mess, at least.”

“Uh, I just puked into a designated puke bucket. That’s not very high up on the list of sexy things.”

Laurel doesn’t answer, and instead plops back down into her seat, yawning for the third time, this one low and long and from deep in her chest. Michaela sighs and turns onto her side to face her, fingering her IV idly.

“You’re always saving me,” she murmurs, and if she didn’t feel so shitty, she thinks the sight of Laurel at her side in the early morning light, faithful and devoted and beautiful, would make her heart flutter for sure. But Laurel takes her hand for a second, right then, sewing their fingers together – and when she does, her heart _does_ flutter, does that weird, scary, upside-down flip-flop, like she’s riding a rollercoaster down some huge hill, into some great unknown.

Michaela sighs. She really doesn’t have the energy to open that particular Pandora’s Box of conflicting emotions this morning.

“I am _not_ always saving you,” Laurel remarks, sitting up. “You’re Michaela Pratt. You really think you need saving?”

“After last night?” she sighs. “I think it’s pretty apparent I could use it. That was… That was so _stupid_ , going out, letting my guard down-”

Laurel squeezes her hand. “That wasn’t your fault. _He’s_ the one who did that. Don’t blame yourself for what he did.”

Michaela nods, managing a smile. Then, suddenly, she asks, “How do you do it?”

“Do what?”

“Keep it together, all the time. And… watch out for everybody. If I were you, I’d be losing it.”

“I am,” Laurel confesses, leaning back in her chair with a sigh. “Not losing it, I mean… not yet. Hopefully. But I’m so tired.” Her voice catches. She sucks in a breath, as if trying to fight off tears. “I spent all day yesterday with Wes trying to calm him down. I’ve been… worried sick about Frank, wherever he is. And I got so scared when you called, I just…” She pauses, lowering her eyes, her composure finally wavering, cracks forming in her concrete surface. Michaela can see her picking a hangnail on her finger anxiously, until small drops of blood seep to the surface. “I-I can’t keep doing this. Taking care of everyone. It’s…”

Michaela frowns, feeling guilty, suddenly. “I’m sorry.”

“No. No, God, I didn’t mean make this about me.” Laurel shakes her head. “’M sorry. I just… say things, when I’m really tired.” She chuckles, a bit awkwardly. “Yeah, I’m, uh, I’m an idiot. Sorry. Especially after what happened-”

“I don’t wanna talk about that. It’s over,” Michaela tells her, and shifts over in her bed, patting the empty space next to her. “C’mere.”

“I’m fine, really-”

Michaela gives her a look. “When was the last time you slept?”

Laurel pauses, biting her lip in contemplation, before settling on, “Um… like, two, three days, maybe? But I’m… I’m good, there was some coffee in the waiting room, so-”

“So nothing,” Michaela chides gently. “You said it yourself; you take care of everyone all the time. Just… let someone take care of you, for once.”

Laurel hesitates again, before finally giving in to her exhaustion, glancing behind her to make sure there isn’t a nurse watching them from the doorway, and settling down next to Michaela – well, more like falling like a lead weight, if she’s being honest. She helps Laurel tug the sheet over her legs, and adjusts the pillow so that it’s between the both of them – but Laurel doesn’t use the pillow; instead, she curls up against her, fitting there like a puzzle piece at her side, and Michaela places a hand on her head without even thinking, drawing it down to her shoulder, holding it, holding _her_. Once Laurel is nestled in snugly, she lets out a great sigh, releasing all the air in her lungs at once, like she’s been holding it in forever and only just remembered she could let it out.

“I don’t think the nurses are gonna be cool with this,” Laurel mutters after a moment, voice soft, as if she’s already on the brink of drifting off.

“You told them you’re my girlfriend, right? I’ll say I need you as my personal teddy bear for… moral support. And that I’ll sue the pants off of this hospital if they don’t accommodate me.”

“Mmm,” Laurel hums, and when Michaela glances down she can see she’s shut her eyes. “That sounds like something you’d say.”

They’re silent, for what must be the longest moment in the world. Michaela loses herself in the sound of Laurel’s breathing, in the feeling of that breathing on her neck, soft as a whisper. There are lines in her face; she looks older than she should. Somehow Michaela hadn’t realized until now how much she worries – about them all. How much she’s done to try to protect them all. Even in near-sleep like this, her features are fraught with anxiety, lips pressed tight together, never completely serene, never at rest even in slumber.

She’s a candle burning at both ends. They all are, Michaela knows, but Laurel more so than the rest of them. She doesn’t let herself break. She doesn’t go wild, let go, like she had the night before, like she had the night Sam died. She hides how she feels, always, even after shooting Annalise, even after everything, and suddenly she has no idea how Laurel manages to keep so calm, bottle everything up; if it was her she’d be about ready to combust, and maybe Laurel is. And she doesn’t want that to happen, ever, because she cares about Laurel, in a way that most certainly isn’t _friends_ , in a deeper way that she’s going to keep locked up tight inside her until one day, maybe, she has a clue what it means.

“He’s gone,” Laurel mutters, out of nowhere, drawing Michaela out of her reverie. Her voice is strained, weak. “Frank. I… I don’t know what to do, and I-”

“ _Shh_ ,” Michaela hushes her gently, fingers playing idly with a strand of her hair. “Just try to get some rest.”

_Don’t talk about him. Don’t think about him. Just be with me._ That’s what she really means. It’s selfish. She tries to make herself feel bad about it, briefly, but she can’t. She _doesn’t_ , and she also can’t pretend she doesn’t know why.

Laurel is silent, for a long time. Then, she manages a watery laugh. “Promise not to puke on me in my sleep?”

Michaela chuckles, and leans her head to the side, resting it on top of Laurel’s. “I’ll do my best.”

She can tell when Laurel finally drifts off, her breathing taking on that distinctive rattle of sleep and evening out, slow and deep. One of her elbows is jabbing Michaela’s ribs, making her wince, but she’s not about to wake her; she wouldn’t wake her even if the damn sky was about to fall around them.

A particularly unfriendly-looking, portly nurse steps in the door not long after. She scowls at the sight of them almost immediately, and strides over, looking all but ready to toss Laurel off the bed herself. But before she can-

_Don't you dare_ , Michaela says with a withering glare. And the woman stops in her tracks, frowns disapprovingly, and walks right back out.


	14. XIV

They release Michaela from the hospital later that day.

And afterwards, much to Laurel’s surprise, things almost start to go back to – dare she say it – normal.

Well, not _normal_ by any kind of conventional societal standards. Wes is pretty much obsessed with his dead father, searching night and day for answers and barely sleeping. Frank is still God knows where, and for all Laurel knows he’s gone rogue and turned into a serial bank robber slash hitman-for-hire. He's become _persona non grata_ around the office. Annalise and Bonnie won’t so much as mention his name.

And it makes her feel like an awful, terrible human being, but now that he’s gone… She feels like she can breathe again, like ever since the Lila thing she’s been suffocating, and somehow hadn’t even noticed. She’s worried about him, sure, and she still cares about him, loves him, more than she knows what to do with – but she can _breathe_. She feels free, and it’s a strange, foreign feeling, adjusting back to a normal human schedule with normal human concerns – but a good one.

Yeah. A good one.

The Michaela Situation becomes… not a situation, anymore. Not something that particularly needs to be resolved. Laurel stops thinking about it that way, and it gives her some clarity, makes everything seem impossibly simple. She likes Michaela. She likes _being with_ Michaela. It’s a crush; innocent, almost high school-esque. The purest, most simple thing in her life is when their eyes meet, and Michaela grins at her, and her heart stutters, and she feels giddy and tingly and thrilled all over. _She’s_ the purest thing in her life – and they’d agreed to be friends, and Laurel can do that if necessary, she really can. If Michaela is as straight as she claims to be – which she really, _really_ doubts – she can get over it. Suck it up. Move on. Unrequited love’s a bore and all that.

She doesn’t want to do that, though. Not at all. And she has the sense that maybe, just maybe, Michaela doesn’t want her to either.

“Here’s to a nice, _normal_ night of study-grouping,” Connor toasts one night as they’re gathered at Laurel’s place for a study group – even Wes, who she’d managed to lure out of his funk and convince to rejoin the land of the living for a night. He holds up a beer, smirking and looking around the circle they’ve formed on the floor of her living room. “May we not add to our body count for the rest of the year.”

Laurel, Michaela, and Asher give half-hearted ‘here-here’s.’ Wes gives an echoed mutter of agreement. They’d abandoned their notes and outlines half an hour ago, replacing them with wine and beer, and no one had protested; even Michaela, top of the class, ultra Type A, anal as all hell about her grades, seems to have adopted a blasé attitude too.

Still, as if to keep up appearances, she gives a weak protest over the rim of her wine glass. “We should be studying. Civpro’s going to kick my ass.”

“C’mon, _Michaela_ ,” Laurel teases, drawling the word. They’re seated side by side, leaning up against the couch, too close for Laurel to focus on much of anything besides how _close_ she is. “We survived not going to jail like, five times. I think we can survive Civpro too.”

“Professor McCreary totally digs dudes, so,” Connor chimes in. “I’ve been flirting all semester. I basically have that A on lockdown.”

“Dude, I should try some man-flirting!” Asher says, taking a sip of his beer. “You gotta give me pointers.”

Connor chuckles, giving him a shrug of consideration. “Uh, just go to his office hours, turn around, stick dat ass out, and you’re well on your way.”

“Man, that sounds so easy!” Asher declares, with a sigh. “If I was gay, you have any idea how sweet my life would be, yo? Because I have a _great_ ass.”

Laurel smirks, at that. Connor snorts, but doesn’t reply; he just takes a long, contemplative swig of his beer.

“But you should totally go for it, though,” Asher continues, unfazed. “I mean, it’d be pretty baller to bone a professor. And now that you and Ollie-oop are…”

He goes silent at once, as if realizing what he’s just said, and promptly shuts up, taking a social cue for once in his life. Laurel frowns, looking across the circle at Connor, who is now staring morosely down into his beer bottle, not saying a word. She’s heard the story from Michaela – not specifics, but the gist of it. Oliver had deleted Connor’s acceptance email to Stanford and called to decline the offer for him. Connor had been furious. Stormed out of their apartment. She’s pretty sure he’s still sleeping on Michaela’s couch.

There’s a moment of awkward silence. Eager to escape, Laurel gets to her feet and breaks it. “Uh, anybody want another beer?”

Before anyone can respond, she turns, steps out of the circle, and goes for the kitchenette across the room.

Behind her, she hears Connor stand too, and mutter, “I’ll help you grab ‘em.”

They both know she’s more than capable of carrying a few beers, but he seems to want to escape the conversation too, and she doesn’t blame him. Once they reach the fridge and are relatively out of earshot of the others, Laurel grabs a beer for herself and glances over at Connor, who is leaning back against the counter, sipping the remains of his with a frown.

“I’m sorry,” she says, keeping her voice low. “About you and Oliver, I mean.”

He grins, ruefully. “Yeah. Me too.”

A beat. Then, Connor shakes his head.

“I really thought we were gonna be the two who made it, y’know. Out of everyone. I mean, no offense, but you and Frank were kinda doomed from the start, Bonnie and Asher were never gonna work out… I just… I thought we had a real shot.” He pauses. “I mean, I guess it’s for the best. At least he never had to find out he was dating a murderer. And he… he deserves better.”

Laurel hums, a noncommittal noise that might be agreement but also might not, and Connor looks over at her suddenly, raising his eyebrows.

“But hey, you rebounded pretty fast, right? Out of the ashes of Coliver comes… new love, for two members of the K5.”

Laurel blinks, and gives a half-laugh, half-scoff. “Excuse me?”

“Oh, please. Don’t act like you don’t know what I’m talking about; you two have been eye-fucking for weeks.”

Laurel isn’t really all that surprised by Connor’s intuition. She and Michaela haven’t been very inconspicuous, sharing one too many long, lingering looks to just be friends, and she’s sure the tension between them is almost palpable at this point – because it sure as hell feels palpable to her. So she just takes a sip of her beer as an excuse to think for a moment, then grins.

“You figured it out, huh?”

He shrugs. “Only after I told Michaela she should give up guys and she got all flustered when I mentioned your name. And _then_ she kept asserting how straight she was. So, yeah. I figured it out. You’re not the only one who’s observant around here.”

Laurel is silent for a moment. Then, she remarks, “Well, good detective work. I think you’re the only one who has.”

“You two done the nasty yet or what?” Laurel just gives him a look, and he shrugs again. “What? C’mon, give me something exciting here. _Titillate_ me. I’m not exactly getting any these days.”

“Once,” Laurel finally confesses into her bottle. “At that bar we went to the night we were convinced Philip was going to kill us all. We had… really drunk, really bad sex in the bathroom.”

Connor cocks his head to one side. “Really _bad_?”

“Well – not bad,” Laurel corrects herself, then smirks. “Actually, uh… Not bad at all. Just really drunk. A lot of fumbling.”

He lets out a low whistle. “Y’know, I never would’ve guessed you two would be the type to fuck in a bathroom. Kudos, for the exhibitionism.”

Laurel snorts. “Thanks.”

“Why don’t you tell people?” he asks, eyes dancing with mirth. “That you play both sides of the field? Let your bi flag fly.”

She shrugs. “Because. I don’t do the whole full-disclosure coming out thing. I don’t think of it as some kind of bad news I have to prepare people for. I just… let them figure it out on their own. And most people just assume I’m straight, because it’s straight until proven otherwise, right?”

“You do that with your folks?”

“Mmm hmm,” she hums, nodding. “I brought my girlfriend Anna home for Christmas my second year at Brown without telling them ahead of time.”

He looks impressed. “How’d that go?”

“Let’s just say… it was a Castillo family Christmas catastrophe that will live forever in infamy. My dad almost had a coronary. I think the only reason they haven’t disowned me is because they’re holding out hope it’s just a phase, and I’ll end up with a guy.”

“Ballsy move.”

She grins, again. “Yup. And, I mean, the way I look at it? I get the best of both worlds.”

“Whatever you say, Hannah Montana. Some advice though? Whatever you do, don’t tell Asher. Because if you do, he’ll never stop asking to watch. Ever.”

Laurel grimaces. “Ugh. Duly noted.”

“And just…” Connor drifts off, suddenly serious as he turns to face her. “Don’t hurt her, okay? She’s had a lot of shitty luck in the dating department, and yeah, she can be pretty… extra, about everything, all the time, but she deserves to be happy. And she’s my best friend. And I want that for her.”

Laurel catches a glimpse of Michaela across the room, right then. She’s laughing at something Asher had said, laughing like she hasn’t seen her laugh in a while, full-chested and free; her face all alight, eyes shining, her peals of laughter like the tinkling of bells, and the sight and sound is so beautiful that Laurel thinks her heart gives out inside her momentarily, like the foolish thing it is.

She snaps out of it quickly, though, and meets Connor’s eyes. “I won’t.”

They’re silent for a moment, as her words settle over them. They’re the truth, and they’re a promise. Laurel would never hurt her, not in a million fucking years, not after all she’s been through, after all they’ve been through _together_. She’s not sure anyone on earth understands her better than Michaela, and hurting her… It’d be like hurting herself, turning a knife in her own stomach. She could never do it. Would hate herself if she ever did, and the thought that she _could_ , that maybe she’s too fundamentally fucked up to avoid doing so, terrifies her.

“Good,” Connor finally says, more sincere than she thinks she’s ever seen him in her life, without even a flicker of snark. He sets down his beer and jams his hands in his pockets, raising his shoulders in his trademark semi-shrug. “And for what it’s worth… you have my blessing.”

“I’m not asking for her hand in marriage,” Laurel chuckles, then sobers up, and nods. “But thanks. Glad to know I have the official bestie blessing.”

“Just FYI, though, if you _do_ hurt her,” Connor jokes, taking a step back towards the group, “you should know I happen to have extensive experience cutting up bodies and burning them.”

Laurel rolls her eyes good-naturedly, and deadpans, “Don’t we all.”

She follows him back over to the group, but he doesn’t make a move to sit; instead, he stays standing and announces, “Well, I’m heading out. I have an eight AM tomorrow, and I need my beauty sleep.”

Connor glances sideways at her, a conspiratorial look in his eyes – and the instant he does, Laurel understands what he’s doing.

“C’mon, bro,” Asher protests from his spot on the carpet, looking up at him. “You had like, two beers. Plus you’re my ride!”

“Which is probably exactly _why_ I shouldn’t have any more if you wanna get home in one piece. So, you coming or not? Waitlist, I’ll drive you too. Chop chop. Up and at ‘em, boys.”

The others seem genuinely bewildered by that; Connor never willingly offers _anyone_ rides. Usually he has to have them forced on him, or bribed out of him, and Laurel notices Michaela furrow her brow at this version of Connor like she’s looking at a veritable alien from outer space. Finally, as Connor herds Wes and Asher over to the door, she snaps out of it and gets to her feet, setting her wine glass down on Laurel’s coffee table.

“Uh, okay,” she mutters. “I better get going too.”

Laurel can’t ignore the twinge in her stomach, at that. “Yeah?”

“Yeah, I, um, Connor’s staying at my place, so…” Michaela drifts off, but doesn’t make another move toward the door. She stays rooted right where she is, looking as unwilling to leave as Laurel is to _let_ her leave, and lowers her eyes for a moment, before flicking them back up, big and brown and dark. “Unless… you want me to stay.”

She does. _God_ she does. Laurel will be the first to admit she hasn’t wanted for much in her life, ever, but the desire she feels now, to be alone with her, to have her _stay_ , slams into her like a wall, almost knocking her off her feet. She hesitates, at first. She doesn’t know why, but she does, even though this _friends_ thing is very obviously crashing and burning, laying charred at her feet. She’d dwell on that, if she were in the mood to dwell. But she isn’t.

Because this _friends_ thing was doomed from the start. It never stood a chance.

“Yeah,” is all she tells her, finally, breathing the word out on one long exhalation. “Yeah. I do.”

So she’s said it. Admitted it. She wants her to stay – and in the same breath, that she wants more. Michaela knows it. She’s as perceptive as they come. She’s sure she can read the want all over her face; she doesn’t even remotely try to conceal it, and Michaela feels simultaneously so close and a thousand miles away, within reach and so far out of it that she could never even hope to touch her. And she’s done all she can do. She’s said it, put it out there, offered that up for Michaela to do with it what she will, put her heart in her hands, and the other girl is just about to open her mouth when-

“So,” Connor breaks in, walking up behind Laurel and making her jump. “Just wanted to say ‘you’re welcome’ in advance. And that you _totally_ owe me one.”

Michaela blinks, then shakes her head. “No, Connor, it’s fine, I’ll just go back with you, you need me to let you in and everything-”

“I know where your spare key is, _Michaela_ ,” Connor replies, then winks at Laurel. “You kids remember to use protection, now.”

Laurel chokes on her beer, at that. Michaela’s jaw drops, and before either of them can say another word he strides out the door with a flourish after Wes and Asher.

“Oh my God,” Michaela blurts out as soon as he’s out of earshot, horrified. “Oh my _God_ , he knows? You told him?”

Laurel shakes her head, and sets her beer down on the coffee table, feeling shockingly calm. “Of course not. You know Connor. He’s always… annoyingly perceptive, at the worst times.”

The door slams behind Connor just then, latching with an audible _click_ that may as well be as loud as a gunshot to Laurel, startling her body into a state of total awareness, her veins pulsing like a grid of electric wires beneath her skin. Just like that, he and the others are long gone. Might as well be in another universe, for all she cares.

And just like that, they’re alone.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Y'all know what's coming next...
> 
> ;P


	15. XV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's a doozy too!! Hooooo boy. 
> 
> Real quick I'd just like to stress again how much all your comments and continued support means to me!! They really do light up my day when I get the email notification in my inbox, and it's so great to hear that people are enjoying. And enjoy this one too!
> 
> I know you will ;)

Michaela can remember the first time she saw Laurel – not like it was yesterday, maybe. But she remembers. She thinks she always will.

First day of classes. Standing in the middle of their criminal law lecture. Speaking up, out of nowhere, voice full of quiet strength, unwavering, and clear as a bell. Carrying over the rows of students. Soft. Nothing remarkable. Nothing that would’ve normally even made her turn her head.

_So what was Ms. Sadowski's mens rea? Think, Mr. Gibbins. It's nothing more than common sense._

_To kill._

But she’d glanced over at her then, surprised. She remembers thinking how mousy Laurel had looked, how much of a Plain Jane, how she’d turned her nose up at the sight of her out of instinct; her denim jacket, pink dress, no doubt both off-the-rack from some cheapo department store. Generic straight brown hair, framing a pretty enough face; not stunning, not gorgeous, but pretty enough. None of those things had stuck out to her. None of them had been particularly attention-grabbing; _nothing_ about Laurel had been particularly attention-grabbing.

Except the angle at which she’d held her chin, defiant and unafraid even while standing before the Great Annalise Keating, jumping in before Wes could answer. Michaela remembers that. It was a bold move, she’d thought, to get herself noticed. Something she would’ve done – not something a mousy archetypical-in-every-way _quiet girl_ would do. She’d thought it was odd, that _Laurel_ was odd – and she still does.

Michaela has always thought she’s an odd girl, sticking out like a sore thumb while simultaneously possessing the ability to make herself near-invisible whenever it suits her, like a chameleon. Unnerving, in her plain-spokenness. Unnerving, with her observant nature. Unnerving, in the way she can look at someone and cut past every lie, all the way down to the truth, to their bones, their very core, like trimming the fat off meat, and seeing them for what they are beneath. That’s what she feels like she’s doing now: dismantling her piece by piece to examine her innermost components. Seeing her – not just superficially, on the surface. Really _seeing_ her.

It’s unsettling, to be stared at like that. Michaela can’t help but squirm beneath her gaze, in a mixture of discomfort and arousal, because Laurel doesn't look like that Plain Jane anymore; she looks nothing like the girl she’d seen that first day, in another life. That Laurel had always just been a blip on her radar. _The wallflower._  She’s anything but, now.  

Now, she’s a silent force of nature – inevitable, like gravity. Drawing her in. Drawing her closer.

“So,” she says, folding her arms and playing it cool, though she’s swiftly losing the ability to access what little chill she has left. “You recruited Connor to be your wingman? Smart.”

Laurel lowers her eyes with a smile, cheeks flushed. “I didn’t do this on purpose. Promise.”

_This._ Get them alone. Michaela believes her. And at the same time, inexplicably, she’s disappointed, wishes that Laurel _had_ done this on purpose – not that she has any reason to believe she doesn’t want this, because she knows she does. She’s the picture of desire right then, downright trembling with it; all red cheeks and parted pink lips and quickened, shallow breath.

So she cocks her head to one side, and bats her eyes flirtatiously, and takes an ever-so-tiny step towards her. “I can still go, you know. If you’re tired of me being your houseguest.”

“I’m not,” Laurel breathes, inching closer as well. The air feels alive between them, jumping with static electricity. Michaela’s word pulses red around the edges, in time with her heartbeat. “ _Mi casa es tu casa_ , as they say.”

“Yeah?” Michaela feels her chest tighten. “And how do they say… kiss me?”

“In Spanish?” Laurel grins, and flushes a shade darker. “ _Bésame_.”

“Mmm,” Michaela hums. “So… _Bésame_.”

Apparently, that’s all the invitation Laurel needs.

She closes the remaining space between them like she’s been waiting her entire life to do it, pressing her lips down on Michaela’s slowly, almost tentatively, as if she believes she’s about to push her away – but she doesn’t. Doesn’t think she could, even if she wanted to. Everything about Laurel washes over her in waves, intoxicates her. She stiffens, at the initial assault; kissing Laurel sober is so different from what little she can remember of it drunk. Neater. More languid, unhurried. Not sloppy and messy, with all too much teeth and saliva.

She tenses, at first.

Then, she surges.

She parts her lips. Moves forward. Gives everything she has in her. Laurel’s hand is on her waist, anchoring their bodies together. Her hand is in Laurel’s hair, tugging her flush against her. Heat. So much _heat_. A spark then a sizzle which builds to a steady, relentless fire. Laurel smolders in her arms like a flame, and Michaela burns with her, hands roaming aimlessly, trying to achieve some kind of closeness that they can never seem to get. She can only see flashes of Laurel – but it isn’t about what she can see; it’s about what she can _feel_ , and she can feel everything, like she never could before. She feels like the world around them is buzzing, her body humming a silent chorus of want. She can feel the softness of Laurel, the gentleness about her. There’s nothing demanding in her kiss; just her, every part of her open wide, and Michaela drinks her up with such fervor that they’re both breathless when they pull apart. Laurel stays close enough to brush her nose ever-so-gently against hers, after. Michaela giggles when she does.

“Are we drunk again?” Michaela asks, smiling back at her. They’ve both had a few drinks, the taste of alcohol in their kiss, but she knows it isn’t the alcohol that’s making her head swim, making that pleasant heat and pressure and need brew between her legs.

Laurel just shakes her head, and kisses her silent. “Uh uh.”

Michaela has the vague idea that they’re heading for the bedroom as they stumble clumsily backwards, both laughing into their kiss so much that it’s more of an occasional brushing of lips than an actual _kiss_. The room is pitch black when they finally manage to stagger inside, and Laurel breaks away with a hum, reaching back to flick on the light switch. Michaela almost says something, half-forming a word on her tongue, but Laurel is kissing her again before she can, swallowing down the words – because they don’t need them. Words are useless. Unnecessary things. In most situations Michaela has more of them than she knows what to do with.

She still does, now. Believe her, she has plenty of words. She could say how wrong this is. How they should stop. How she’s not sure. How she needs to get home. How – _God, this is crazy, after Caleb, after everything, we can’t…_

She could. Should, maybe.

Won’t.

“You told me… that day, when we were talking about the orgy,” is what she says instead, panting, as Laurel’s hands go for the zipper on her pink sheath dress, tugging gently, as if asking permission to continue, “that I should just wait until we’d seen each other naked.”

Another light tug. The teeth of the zipper part. Laurel’s eyes look hungry. “I remember.”

“Well,” she teases, and with one final pull the front of her dress loosens around her shoulders, and with another it’s off, pooling gracefully around her ankles. A rush of cool air smoothes itself over her skin, “you better show me what’s so great, huh?”

Laurel accepts that challenge. She doesn’t strip to put on a show; she strips with purpose, her movements precise and determined. Off goes her red waterfall blouse, her lithe, tapered fingers undoing the buttons and parting it down the middle and then shucking the thing like it’s somehow offended her. Michaela gapes for a moment, eyes locked on her breasts; tightly contained in a black bra and just begging to be freed, kissed, touched in any and every way possible. Pert and round and small and perfect, and she can’t help but wonder how they’d feel in her hands, her mouth – and it takes a while before she snaps out of it, remembers to stop drooling like a teenager.

This is most certainly _not_ first date behavior. She’s not a first-date kind of girl. Or a third date. Or even a fifth. And she and Laurel have never even been on _one_ date. This is crazy.

She feels crazy. She feels like she’s flying.

Laurel shimmies her way out of her slacks next, and it’s so awkward and cumbersome and far from sexy that by the time they’re off they’re both giggling helplessly. Laurel is left only in her bra and panties, after, looking at Michaela like she’s inviting her to do the honors and get rid of those too. And she does; she reaches out, almost reverently, very timidly, behind her back to unhook her bra.

Which she finds out, very quickly, that she can’t do.

She can do it on herself perfectly fine, but on someone else, and on Laurel in particular… She fumbles, fingers clumsy and only growing clumsier with each second that passes. It isn’t long before they’re laughing again, and Laurel finally reaches back to help her; never looking at her with irritation, or disdain, or even a flicker of annoyance. She just pecks her on the lips, and lets the garment tumble off onto the carpet too, baring her breasts to her.

She half-expects Laurel to look away, shyly, but she should know better than to think she will; Michaela stares at her, and she stares right back, even nearly naked as she is, unashamed, undaunted, and unburdened to fill the silence. A grin tugs one corner of her lips up very faintly, just a flicker, and Michaela realizes she’s staring the same instant Laurel does, taking her in, running her eyes over every single inch of bare, milky skin, which mixes with golden tones from the lamplight and flashes of molten silver from the moon to make her look like some sort of metal sculpture, a work of art. Her stomach is flat, muscles in her abdomen toned, waist curving in gently like a harp, arms thin and sinewy, hanging at her sides. Her breasts are peaked with plum-colored nipples, the valley between them a gentle scoop, her hair resting in messy waves around her shoulders. Face angular, features ever-so-slightly birdlike, blue-grey eyes catching the moonlight and glinting in a way that reminds her of knives, danger. But a good kind of danger.

Michaela can’t breathe, as she looks at her. She’s not sure she wants to.

So she pivots forward, kissing her, then drawing back to pant across her lips, “You said I was yours, too. Am I… Am I still?”

“You’re not anybody’s,” Laurel murmurs, tilting her head to one side. “Unless you wanna be.”

Michaela’s voice is a whisper, released in one breath into her ear. “I do.” _I wanna be yours._

Michaela doesn’t know what it is, precisely, that compels her to get down on her knees just then, but she sinks down even so, and looks up at her, so fascinated by the sight of each gentle curve from below that her jaw drops, for a moment. Her hands go for Laurel’s panties, that thin, barely-there layer of black lace obscuring the last few regions of her body from sight. Laurel makes a soft sound above her, breathy and carrying her name on it, a faint _Michaela_ …

And Michaela doesn’t believe in God. Never had, even as a girl. Now she knows she never will. Her god is a goddess, and that goddess’s name is Laurel Castillo, and she’s on her knees to worship her – because if she’s ever seen anything truly holy, truly worthy of adoration, she’s standing before her now.

She’s been on her knees, before. Too many times to count. For Aiden. Levi. Caleb, once or twice. Never because she’d wanted to. Always to fulfill an obligation. Like a contract. Like currency. She’s a chronic people-pleaser, so used to neglecting her own desires that she doesn’t even think about it, anymore.   

It takes her aback, now, how much she does want _this_.

Laurel’s panties are gone, then. Michaela sees that she’d shaved the mound between her legs immaculately smooth, and she feels a rush of saliva in her mouth, an innate reaction that takes her aback because of how _natural_ it feels. She’s no longer really able to remember that she’s never done this before, that she has, quite frankly, no fucking clue what to do, how to please her. She just knows to _do_ , that she’s a woman of action; acting first and figuring things out along the way. And she needs to do this. Her. She needs to _taste_ her.

Laurel’s voice, however, stops her before she can.

“Hey,” she tells her, voice lilting. She reaches down, placing a hand on her cheek, even though Michaela can feel her tremble with desire, see the quivers in her unsteady knees, and in her thighs. Laurel gulps. “You don’t… You don’t have to do this, okay?”

She frowns up at her. “What?”

“If you don’t-” A whimper cuts her off. Laurel shakes her head. “If you don’t really want to, Michaela, I don’t want you to feel like you have to-”

That bewilders Michaela, and she’s sure it shows. “But… I _do_ want to.”

Laurel is silent, gnawing on her lower lip, a storm of conflicting emotions raging behind those eyes of hers. Michaela scoots closer, reaching up to urge her legs apart. Laurel repositions accordingly, and inhales sharply when she leans in, pressing a kiss to the softness of her thigh then drawing back.

“I want to,” she repeats, more firmly this time. She can feel Laurel’s wetness, sticky on the insides of her thighs; the way she radiates with heat from her core, a barely-contained lake of fire. “I want _you_.”

There’s a shift in the world, when she leans in to taste her.

Michaela doesn’t know what it is that changes, or where, or how, or why. It’s imperceptible and catastrophic at the same time, like every star in the galaxy has expanded into a supernova, like every planet has aligned and stopped turning, like every black hole and molecule of dark matter floating in that great unknown of the universe has changed form, evaporated, disappeared. Like the world itself is full of blinding light. She feels transformed, into some kind of transcendent, higher being, and at the same time she feels like a child. She raises her head and envelops her folds in a deep kiss, breathing in her musky scent, tasting that tangy sweetness, kissing those lips just like she would the ones of her mouth. Everything about Laurel – her taste, her smell, her body – is a revelation. Sweet and soft, where she’s only ever known roughness; gentle curves, where she’s only ever known harsh planes and sharp angles.

It’s like baptism, tasting her, drinking from her font of holy water. She feels like a woman born again. Blessed.

“ _Michaela_ …” Laurel gasps, and Michaela shudders, feels herself drip at the sound of her voice. “Oh, God, Michaela…”

She licks her tentatively, at first; one long sweep of her tongue, from the base of her pussy up to the hood of her clit. That’s all it takes for Laurel to collapse backward onto the bed with a moan, stumbling and reaching out to prop herself up into a semi-sitting position as Michaela shifts forward to kneel at the end of it, continuing her onslaught, markedly more determined and confident now. She zeros in on her clit, pink and oh-so-kissable, and suckles at it, listening to the way Laurel’s gasps crescendo and cross over into a high, fluttery, almost musical register.

“I love how you taste,” she whines against her folds, lapping her up, and it’s not to dirty-talk her, drive her on; she means it. Laurel is sweet, sweeter than honey, sweeter than sugar, her moisture coating her jaw and spilling past her lips, dampening her face all the way up to the tip of her nose. She’s _soaked_ in her, wouldn’t have it any other way. “Oh…”

Michaela can’t really see Laurel that well. She can only see flashes of pink, slippery flesh from below as she goes to town on her, slipping her tongue between her folds, then slowly probing inside with one finger while her lips migrate to her clit instead. She kisses at it, nips very gently, laps and caresses and works the little nub back and forth with her tongue, and Laurel responds with a tightening grasp on her hair, little pinpricks of pain scattering across her scalp. But Michaela doesn’t care, and when she glances up at Laurel she just marvels at the sight for a moment, momentarily ceasing her efforts. She’s propped herself up with one hand, still in a semi-siting position, with her head thrown back, exposing her pale neck. She’s panting half-hysterically, shuddering bone-deep, flushed from head to toe, the muscles in her pussy twitching, her every nerve ending so receptive and responsive that Michaela’s sure she must be doing _something_ right.

But she can’t be sure, and she sure as hell doesn’t want to mess this up, and so Michaela manages to catch her breath long enough to choke out, “Am I doing good?”

“ _Fuck_ yes,” Laurel answers in a burst, followed by a ragged moan, pulled deep from her lungs. “Oh fuck, _please_ don’t stop, don’tstopdon’tstop.”

She grins.

She doesn’t.

Michaela keeps going, licking patterns and shapes on her with no real rhyme or reason or any kind of finesse. It doesn’t take long for her to get lost in it: in Laurel’s cries, like an erotic aria; in her shivers and shudders and quivers, which carry across onto Michaela’s tongue; in her juices, so slick and abundant that for one irrational moment Michaela wonders if it’s possible to drown in her. It’s filthy. Messier than she’d imagined. Laurel’s cunt is sloppy and sopping wet, her face all but jammed against it, her wetness smeared on the creases of her thighs, all over her mound, up to her clit. It must be on the sheets, too. It must be a drug. It’s entrancing, how bad Michaela wants it on her, all over her.

“C-close, I’m… I’m gonna-” Laurel moans again, more guttural this time, low and long in an animalistic kind of way. She hooks a leg over her shoulder, hips bucking up helplessly into her mouth. “Fuck, fuck, Michaela, please, _ah_ -”

Michaela would be the first to admit that she likes being in control. She likes _power_. Lusts after it. Always has, always will, and she’s never felt more powerful than she does right then, dismantling Laurel with her tongue. She hadn’t been sure she could, if she would know how, but she can feel Laurel tensing, her muscles seizing tighter and tighter, body crunching up. She can feel the power coursing through her veins, watching her unfurl, shake to pieces because of her, and she loves the feeling, but it isn’t… It isn’t _about_ that, somehow. Power. Not now. Maybe a month or two ago it would’ve been, but this is about Laurel, pleasing Laurel. She wants to. She wants to make her come so badly that she can hardly think of anything else, so she doubles her efforts accordingly, adding two of her fingers, feeling the delicate ring of muscle at Laurel’s entrance flutter and stretch to accommodate them, and she’s so wet that when she thrusts them out and back in she can hear her walls faintly suctioning around them. She’s burning hot, her cunt hungry, ravenous, uncontained like wildfire and raging.

Michaela thinks she could do this all day.

“Come,” she mutters against her folds, feeling their velvety softness beneath her lips. “Let me make you come, please, Laurel…”

Laurel’s words aren’t _words_ , now. They’re half-formed syllables, fragments. She’s babbling like a child, speaking in tongues. She’s so far gone. And still she works, devoted, relentless; Michaela Pratt _never_ backs down from a challenge, and if making Laurel come is tonight’s challenge, then hell will freeze over before she fails to deliver. The cat-sweeps of her tongue grow harder, faster. She eats her out like it’s her sole fucking purpose for existing, and maybe it is. She thinks she hears Laurel sob something about _too much, fuck, too much, so good_ , but she can’t be sure; she’s pretty much wearing her thighs as earmuffs now, her face burrowed between them, everything else muffled and distant, like she’s underwater.

She isn’t sure what it is she does, exactly, that sends Laurel reeling.

It’s her fingers and her tongue, flicking at her clit, maybe. Or the way she moans against her folds, feeling the vibrations carry onto her skin. Or the way she surges, dropping her jaw and taking as much of her into her mouth at once as she can. Or the way the sucks her clit into her mouth, out of nowhere. Maybe a combination of all four. But what she _does_ now is that it’s enough, and Laurel wrenches herself upward suddenly, going perfectly tense and still for a moment, her lips forming a silent ‘O’ with nothing coming out but a squeak, which deepens in pitch and morphs into something like a wail. When she comes she _comes_ , comes in waves, convulsing, making sounds like sobs; for someone they used to call _the quiet one_ , she’s anything but, right now. A twitch runs through her entire body, before she goes limp and boneless, like a rag doll.

She’s never seen anything like it. She thinks the sight of Laurel coming might be one of the Seven Wonders of the World.

She comes all over her face. Gushes into her mouth, thick as syrup and ten times as sweet. Michaela drinks her down, eagerly. Feeds off her like a starving woman. She’s so wet it takes every scrap of willpower in her not to reach down and stroke herself as she listens – and _watches_ – her come her brains out, which she thinks is a very apt description; whatever brains Laurel had left seem to have turned to mush, and may as well not exist at all. The whites of her eyes are all she can see. She doesn’t know where Laurel is, where her mind has ascended to. All Michaela knows is that it sure as hell isn’t in any atmosphere in their vicinity.

“Oh God, you’re so good,” Laurel sputters, as she starts to come down, relaxing back, eyes still closed. “ _Fuck_ , Michaela…”

A moment of silence passes, filled only by Laurel’s heavy breathing. Michaela draws back, wiping her mouth off and licking her lips. Finally, Laurel shakes her head, and glances down at her with a shaky, loopy smile.

“Come up here,” she tells her, breathless, cupping her cheek. “C’mere.”

Michaela does. She straightens her back, raising herself, and Laurel meets her halfway in a searing kiss that’s fierce and full of passion, but not overtly rough. She’s still drenched by her, and Laurel seems to have no qualms about helping her with that problem, moaning when she tastes herself and deepening the kiss. Her eyes are hazy as the aftershocks rumble through her, the kind of cloudy lust-haze Michaela has seen a million times, but there’s a dash of something else thrown in, too. Affection. _Real_ affection. Like she always does, Laurel is looking at her like she’s the only girl in the world, and her heart falters for a half second, like a skipping record.

She’s starting to get the impression that she just might be falling for her, a tiny little bit.

“So,” Laurel begins, after they part. “Guess I was wrong. You’re not a pillow _princesa_ after all.”

Michaela raises her eyebrows. “A what?”

“You know. Pillow princess. Someone who… does a lot of receiving but not a lot of reciprocating.”

Michaela just looks at her. “Please. Aiden didn’t go down on me _once_ the whole five years we dated. I think I can afford to be a pillow princess.”

“I _never_ -” Laurel yanks her up, suddenly, and swallows her words into a kiss, “want to hear that name again.”

Eventually, Michaela makes her way up onto the bed, sitting facing Laurel with their legs scissored together. They kiss for a while, slow and sleepy, before Michaela breaks away and hums.

“Call me that again,” she breathes, licking her lips. “ _Princesa_.”

“ _Princesa_ ,” Laurel echoes dutifully, and pecks her on the nose, giggling. “You are a _princesa_.”

“Again,” she says, breathier this time, squeezing her thighs together and feeling how sticky they are. Laurel catches on quickly, and smirks, eyes narrowed.

“ _Princesa_ ,” she purrs, and dives down to kiss her shoulder, then samples the skin of her neck. “You’re my _princesa_.”

_Princesa_. Princess. She feels like one, right now. Laurel’s princess. She’d be Laurel’s _anything_ , so long as it means being near her. And she’s had pet names, before. Nicknames. _Prom queen_ , Frank had sneered at her. _Shooting star_. Aiden had liked _baby. Babe._ Never affectionately though; he’d always used them in a condescending way, to talk down to her, infantilize her. Levi had preferred harsher ones – in bed, at least. _Bitch. Slut. Cocktease._ Maybe she’d liked them. Maybe she’d pretended to. _Whore_ , had been Caleb’s choice. All the things she’s been called by men…

But _princesa_ is so tender, so loving. The warm lilt of Laurel’s voice as it rolls off her tongue makes her melt. Makes her weak. _Princesa_. Her _princesa_.

She could get used to hearing that. She already has.

So she lets Laurel pull her close, kiss her again. And, like the naiad Laurel resembles, Michaela lets her wrap her arms around her and pull her under, drag her to her sweet, sweet doom.


	16. XVI

There’s something inherently therapeutic about watching Michaela sleep.  

Laurel has, for the record, been to actual therapy – for a number of reasons she chooses not to dwell on at this point in time. She’d done all the laying down on cold leather couches in stuffy old offices and talking about her _feelings_ and being psychoanalyzed by little middle-aged men with black beady eyes and glasses – the whole unpleasant nine yards. It’d been one monumental waste of her time.

Because the sight of Michaela dozing, rolled over on her side and bathed in the light of the new day, does more good for her mental health than months of all that.

Something about being with Michaela manipulates time, slows it down to creeping turtle-speed. She has no clue how long she’s been staring at her – since just before sunrise, at least. She’d watched her during it, watched as the golden rays poured in through her blinds and gradually widened into beams, spilling across Michaela’s skin and dancing in her hair. She’d watched her glow, her silhouette illuminated with flecks of that gold, too, pouring over her like liquid. She’d observed the gentle rise and fall of her breasts, just barely obscured by the sheets, and the way her sunlit face relaxes into a picture of serenity, without a crease or line of worry anywhere on it. Laurel lets her breathing wash over her, draw her in with each inhalation and release her with every breath out, like the moon pulling the tides with its mystical power.

She’s convinced she’s found perfection, in her. She may, as a matter of fact, be dreaming.

Laurel pinches herself. She’s not.

She smiles.

Then, she reaches over, tracing a line on her arm, up to her shoulder, dark skin impossibly soft beneath her fingertips, smooth as silk. Michaela’s nose twitches like a rabbit’s when she does, and Laurel can’t help but chuckle as she watches her stir, making a low, sleepy, humming sound. She shifts around a bit, moving her limbs, testing them, making the sheets rustle, before finally opening her eyes. They’re a warm brown shade in the sunlight, with flecks of that gold catching in them, glittering, glowing like the rest of her. Momentarily, Laurel stops breathing, goes still on the pillow beneath her head.

Because Michaela looks like a beautiful dream; the most beautiful dream she’s ever had. And she’s acutely aware of how lucky she is, right then.

“Good morning, sunshine,” Laurel finally tells her, voice croaky.

For one irrational moment, she’s sure Michaela is going to bolt upright, horrified to realize where she is, and fly out of bed, away from her. She can even hear her, sputtering something about how _this is a mistake, oh God, we shouldn’t have done this_ , _Laurel-_

But she doesn’t. She doesn’t say any of that. Instead she just yawns, her face crinkling in the most adorable way again, and tucks her hands beneath her head, smiling back at her.

“G’morning,” she murmurs, then blinks. “Did I kick last night?”

“After I was done with you?” Laurel teases. “You slept like a baby. You _are_ a bit of a blanket hog, though.”

Michaela scoffs, and rolls over onto her back. “Sue me.”

Laurel kisses her, instead. Kisses her and tastes herself on her tongue very briefly, before Michaela insists on trying to push her away and giggles.

“No, no, I’m gross. I have morning breath, Laurel, stop-”

“Sue me,” Laurel breathes against her lips.

Michaela doesn’t put up much of a fight, after that.

It’s a while before they break apart – again, Laurel has no idea exactly how long. Time doesn’t exist here, with her; it’s a far-off, alien concept that only exists beyond these four walls, and for Laurel, right this moment, there _is_ no world beyond these four walls. So she kisses her, slow, lazy kisses, peppering them on her jawline, then lower, to her neck and collarbone and breasts, mapping her body like an explorer and taking note of every crease and crevice and curve. It isn’t long before her hand – with a mind of its own – ventures south, finds that telltale dampness gathering there between her legs, pearly beads of moisture coating her fingers. It also isn’t long before she has her coming all over those fingers, throwing her head back and unraveling with high, reedy gasps.

“I’m coming!” she announces, like she seems to think Laurel needs verbal confirmation of the fact. “I’m coming, I’m coming, _ah_ -”

“Oh, really?” Laurel laughs, face buried in her throat. “I wouldn’t have guessed.”

She cracks a smile. “S… Shut up – oh _fuck_ , Laurel…”

“Hey, be nice to me,” she says, pecking her on the lips. “I’m the one getting you off here.”

They hold each other, after, in the stillness of the young day. After a while Laurel proposes breakfast in bed, offering to make her famous pancake recipe, but Michaela grumbles at the idea of her leaving, and it doesn’t take much convincing for Laurel to give in and stay.

“I never wanna leave this bed,” Michaela murmurs, burying her face into the pillow. “Never. Never ever.”

“Me either,” Laurel affirms, and rolls over onto her side to face her. “You ever spent an entire day in bed before?”

Michaela quirks an eyebrow. “Please. I’ve been productive every single day for the last ten years.”

“So that’s a no?”

“Yes, that’s a _no_.” Michaela pauses. “But… maybe there are some productive things I can do in bed, too.”

“I would say making me come counts as productive. So there’s one.”

Michaela snorts. “Whatever you say.”

They’re silent, for a long moment, and it’s a comfortably lazy silence. Then, Michaela sighs, growing abruptly serious, the corners of her mouth tugging downward into a frown.

“What are we doing, Laurel?” she asks, softly, suddenly. “What is… this?”

“This?”

“This. _Us_. I just…” Michaela lowers her eyes. “I don’t know what I’m doing. And you’re… you, and-”

“And by _me_ you mean… a girl?” Laurel clarifies.

Michaela frowns a bit deeper, lowering her eyes. “It’s not that I don’t like you. I do. A-a lot. And that’s what’s freaking me out – because maybe I’ve been… gay this whole time, and I just didn’t-”

“You know bisexual is a thing, right?” Laurel interrupts, gently. “And it’s not just like some… halfway point. Or a cop-out.”

Michaela’s frown abates, relaxing into a flat line. “I know.”

Laurel waits, for a moment, sure she’s about to say more. But after a minute passes and she doesn’t continue, Laurel pipes up instead.

“We don’t have to label this,” she says, finally. “And you don’t have to label yourself, not if you’re not ready. You’ll figure it out. _We’ll_ figure it out.” She pauses, giving her a soft smile. “We’ll take this slow. Slow as you want – and we don’t have to be anything. We can just be… us.”

“So not… girlfriends, or anything?”

“Not unless you wanna be.”

“Oh.” Michaela almost looks crestfallen, inexplicably. “Okay.”

Laurel raises her eyebrows. “Wait, so – does that mean you _do_ want to be girlfriends? Is _Michaela Pratt_ asking me to go steady with her?”

“Shut up, that’s not what I meant. I just…” She drifts off, meeting her eyes, surprisingly earnestly. She gives her a grin that looks almost sad, but a happy kind of sad. “You’re amazing. And sweet. And you were right in front of me, all along, and I… I missed you.”

Laurel wants to laugh at how Michaela looks: pouting, almost apologetic for not wanting to jump her bones sooner.

But she doesn’t laugh; she just scoots closer, lays her head down next to Michaela’s on the other girl’s pillow. “I’m the wallflower, remember? I’m easy to miss.”

Michaela smiles, reaching over to lace their fingers together and playing idly with her hand, but the smile doesn’t reach her eyes; it looks markedly distant, like her mind is somewhere else entirely.

She lets out a breath, finally. “The first crush I ever had was on a girl, you know.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.” She nods, doesn’t elaborate for a minute. “I think… I’ve always known, deep down. That was why I freaked out about Aiden the way I did, and I know it was shitty, and it’s not an excuse, but… I had a plan. Get married – to a man. Have kids. Secure my place in the upper echelons of society. All of that involved being straight.” Michaela pauses, and looks over at her. “You, this… This was never part of my plan.”

“So come up with a new one,” Laurel proposes. “A less-than-straight plan. You can call it Plan B. Y’know. B for bi.”

That earns her a laugh.

“Well, I could still be president,” Michaela says, with a sparkle in her eye. “The first black, female president of the United States.”

“I’d vote for you. I’d even be your VP. We could rule the free world together. And we’d kick _so_ much ass.”

Michaela closes her eyes, humming. “Ugh, I _love_ the sound of that.”

_President Pratt_. Laurel agrees; that has one hell of a ring to it, and looking at Michaela now, she knows she was born for that, destined for that kind of greatness. With all her fire and ambition and passion… she can’t imagine Michaela being anything less.

“ _I_ want to hear more about this first crush,” Laurel tells her, grinning. “Tell me about her.”

Something darkens, in Michaela’s eyes, like storm clouds brewing. But the look is there and gone within seconds, and she presses her lips into an even flatter line, looking reluctant.

“I hate talking about my childhood,” she confesses, voice suddenly quiet, almost timid. She draws in on herself a bit, like a turtle retreating into its shell.

Laurel inches a bit closer, and gives her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Trust me, me _too_. And you don’t have to tell me. But…”

_But I want to know you_ , are the words she doesn’t say. And she does. She’s worked with Michaela all year, and she knows her, understands her, maybe, but can’t help but want _more_ , to know everything about her. Her first crush. Her childhood. Her favorite color. Favorite flavor of ice cream. Even the trivial, meaningless little things. All of it. All of _her_.

“But if you want to,” she finishes, “I’m listening.”

Another pause, longer and palpably heavier with contemplation this time. Still, Michaela doesn’t say anything, just chews on her lower lip and absentmindedly caresses the area between Laurel’s thumb and forefinger with her own thumb. Then, finally, Laurel sees something click into place behind Michaela’s eyes, sharp and sure, and she opens her mouth to begin, her words measured and hypnotic, in a way.

“I grew up in southern Louisiana, on a bayou. In a swamp. We were dirt poor. We didn’t even have a house; we had a shack with a tin roof. We were hungry, too. All the time. So hungry. I remember…” A pause. Laurel listens, intently. Michaela sighs. “I was an only child. I never knew my birth father. My birth mom died when I was four. I… I barely even remember her face. But the local pastor and his wife took me in, after their daughter died. Things were better, with them. Our house was more of a _house_ than a shack, at least. And I wasn’t hungry as much. I grew up going to church every Sunday with them. Praying every night and kneeling ‘til my knees hurt. I was terrified to do anything against the word of God. Be a dirty sinner.” She chuckles, softly. “So you can imagine my adoptive parents’ horror when I came home from school one day and announced that I didn’t want to marry a _boy_ ; _I_ wanted to have a wife.”

Laurel laughs. So does Michaela.

“Her name was Leonie,” she divulges, mischief in her eyes. “We were seven, and we’d both decided that boys had cooties, so our solution was just to marry each other and leave boys out of it.”

“A good solution.” Laurel smiles. “You were very progressive for a seven-year-old.”

Michaela scoffs. “Yeah, well, my parents didn’t agree. I got paddled for it. Screamed at for hours with that ‘men shall not lie-th with men’ thing, whatever it is, and how it was the same for girls. And after _that_ , I spent pretty much the rest of my adolescence trying to…”

“Pray away the gay?”

“I guess you could call it that.”

Laurel lets the words settle over them, before asking, “And after that?”

“After that? I got out of that place. I didn’t want to spend my whole life living in a swamp and getting knocked up at seventeen and having five kids I couldn’t feed. I didn’t know that much about the outside world. I’d barely left that town, ever, but… I knew I wanted to see it. So I went to school. Every day. Most of the other kids would skip, show up late. Stop coming. I never did. I went to that little schoolhouse, every single day. I learned to read and write. They had a high school too, the next town over. It was a sorry excuse for a school, but… I still walked there every day, through that stinking swamp. Walked miles. And I never missed a day there, either.”

Laurel doesn’t say a word; she just listens, fascinated, as Michaela continues, as if in a trance.

“One of the teachers there was called Mrs. Harris. She taught history. And she noticed me, how hard I worked. Started telling me about college, taught me how to write application essays, apply for scholarships. Even helped me pay some of the application fees. I worked my ass off every night, writing those essays. Studying. Getting good grades. I used to stay up all night, sometimes. I didn’t really know what I wanted, I don’t think, I just… Knew I wanted something _better_. And I got into Princeton at the end of my senior year, with a full ride. And I left that stinking bayou… and never looked back. But, I mean, I found out pretty quick I didn’t fit in at college when I got there. At all.” Again, she pauses. “I was a poor black girl from a Louisiana swamp living with a bunch of rich, white trust-fund babies. They all talked different. Looked at me like I was… some kind of alien whenever I opened my mouth.”

“I started trying to get rid of the accent my second year. By then… I knew I wanted to be a lawyer, and I knew no one would ever take a black woman seriously as a lawyer if I sounded like ghetto trash. So I got rid of it. Watched TV shows and listened to audiobooks. I practiced, and practiced, until I could sound just like the rest of them. I graduated, _summa cum laude_. I worked my ass off for that degree, too. I worked my ass off for _everything_.” Michaela lets out a breath, and seems to remember where she is, suddenly, and who she’s talking to. “I, uh… Sorry. You didn’t ask for my life story.”

“Maybe not,” Laurel concedes, reaching up to stroke a finger down her arm and feeling her heart seize up inside her chest as Michaela looks at her with those brown doe eyes of hers; eyes that she thinks could probably get her to do just about anything in the world. “But I loved hearing it.”

“So what? Do I finally get the _mysterious_ Laurel Castillo story now or what?”

Laurel props herself up on an elbow and leans over Michaela, brushing the question off. “If you’re in the mood to waste half an hour of your life, sure.”

Michaela furrows her brow. “What? I told you mine. You owe me.”

Laurel is silent, for a moment. Then, she leans down, pressing her forehead against the other girl’s and taking a deep breath of her into her lungs.

“I don’t want to talk about it. Them. My parents. Or _think_ about them.” She ghosts her lips across hers. “I just wanna be with you.” _I want to forget them. Forget the world. Forget anyone that isn’t the two of us, right here, right now._

It strikes her as a bit unfair, for a moment. Michaela had opened up to her, even though she’d been hesitant; it’s only right that she should do the same. Yet just thinking of her father makes her stomach lurch; a painful, visceral kind of reaction inside her. It tarnishes her happiness, just the slightest bit – and she sure as hell doesn’t want anything, or anyone, especially not _him_ , her father, ruining this moment for her now.

She’s happy, for once. She hasn’t been happy like this since she can remember. But she’s _happy_ here, with Michaela, and God help anyone who tries to steal that away from her.

Michaela looks disappointed, and doesn’t try to hide it when she pulls away from the kiss. “One day, though?”

“One day,” she promises, with a nod, and she means it. She does.

But today is not that day. Today is a Saturday, the heat of summer blowing in and melting away the last few lingering frosts of springtime, hot enough that they kick the sheets and blankets off the bed. Today is for her, for them both; for the women they are, the girls they were. The children they’ll never be again.

And today is for eating breakfast, too. Because Laurel is _really_ damn hungry.

An audible growl in her stomach announces the fact, as if it’s threatening to start attacking her internal organs if she doesn’t get something to placate it ASAP, and she groans, flopping over onto her back. “You know we have to get up and get food at some point, right?”

“What?” Michaela feigns innocence, batting her eyes. “I can’t just eat you?”

“As much as I wish it were biologically possible to subsist off of pussy… no. Actual food.” Michaela opens her mouth, but Laurel cuts her off, “And _actual food_ does not include Hot Pockets.”

She fake-glowers at Laurel, making her way over to her on the bed to straddle her. “Okay, you know what? You can take that anti-Hot Pocket rhetoric and get out of my bed.”

Michaela leans down just then, kissing her. Laurel giggles against her lips.

“Uh, this is _my_ bed,” she asserts, to not much avail.

Michaela pulls away and cocks her head to one side, her hair tumbling down her shoulders, eyes inviting Laurel to pounce.

“Sue me.”

Laurel’s hears that, but at the same time doesn’t listen, and doesn’t try to formulate some kind of witty comeback, or even formulate any words at all. Because Michaela’s naked body is a sight to behold from below, all smooth curves and unblemished, glowing skin, and again, she thinks _Perfection_. She’s _perfect_ , and she’s hers – all hers. She marvels for a moment, filled from head to toe with warmth at the thought, before Michaela clambers off the bed and nods toward the bathroom.

“Shower first. Breakfast second,” she says, and it’s clear that order of events isn’t up for debate this morning.

Laurel doesn’t care, not really. So she plays along, hopping to her feet and striding toward the bathroom after her, beaming.

“Dessert too, though,” she calls out after her, grinning wickedly as she listens to _hiss_ of the shower on the other side of the door. “Dessert's the priority.”


	17. XVII

It’s 62° and rainy on the day of Caleb Hapstall’s funeral.

There’s a sticky layer of humidity in the air; the hot, smothering, unpleasant kind that gets caught in your throat and clogs it. The grass beneath Michaela’s feet is wet; there must inevitably be mud caked on the bottoms of her heels. Her umbrella doesn’t do much to shield her from the rain when it gusts sideways, coating her back through her tight black dress and making her shudder.

That part she doesn’t mind as much; it allows her to cry without looking so obviously pathetic. There’s no one here to notice the difference between tears and rainwater. The Catholic priest, droning on monotonously about the valley of death like he couldn’t care less, probably less than thrilled to be presiding over the funeral of a serial killer. Catherine, who somehow had been granted leave to attend. Laurel.

But Laurel does notice. Laurel notices everything, like she always does, and so she reaches down, clasping her hand and giving it a firm, reassuring squeeze. It anchors Michaela, right then.

It feels more like home than any place she’s ever called a house in her life.  

“ _The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want. He makes me lie down in green pastures. He leads me beside still waters. He restores my soul. He leads me in paths of righteousness for his name’s sake_ …”

The howl of the cloudburst builds to a crescendo, the wind beating at them, rain coming down in sheets. But there’s no lightning. No rolling thunder. The sky is clear, the late spring sun shining down, deceptively cheery and belying Michaela’s mood. Somehow it all feels wrong. There’s a storm of anger brewing inside her, and Michaela wants the drumming of thunder and dark clouds and vicious bolts of lightning to split open the sky; hell, she wants a _hurricane_ to match how she feels, to echo her rage. She wants the whole world to know.

As if sensing that, Laurel holds her hand just a bit tighter, huddled underneath the umbrella with her as she is, awkwardly hunched over. She doesn’t say anything; she doesn’t need to. Laurel is that rare kind of person who can speak without even opening her mouth, and when their eyes meet Laurel’s tell her all she needs to hear.

_It’s okay. It’s all right. I’m here, Michaela. I’ll always be here._

Again, Michaela has the recurring, semi-terrifying notion that she’s falling for her; that oh-so-familiar drop in her stomach. It’s more than a little out of place, right here and now – and it’s an unbidden thought, but it’s not an unwelcome one.

No. Not unwelcome at all.

_“In sure and certain hope of the resurrection to eternal life through our Lord Jesus Christ, we commend to Almighty God our brother Caleb Hapstall; and we commit his body to the ground; earth to earth; ashes to ashes, dust to dust. The Lord bless him and keep him, the Lord make his face to shine upon him and be gracious unto him and give him peace…”_

_Peace_ , Michaela thinks. Peace. He doesn’t deserve peace. Definitely not anything resembling mercy or eternal life, and she doesn’t believe in God, but if she did she’d tell him to give Caleb Hapstall nothing more than a one-way ticket to the fiery infernos of hell.

She approaches Catherine, after the priest finishes and the gravediggers take his place to lower the casket; simple, made of gleaming cherry wood and adorned only with the single white rose his sister had placed on it. She’s dressed all in black, clutching an umbrella like she’s sinking underneath its weight, pale and thin and wan, and looking so withdrawn that Michaela can practically feel the pain radiating from her. Her eyes brim with tears, which she makes an abortive attempt to blink away the instant she notices her approaching, and sniffles, as the rain lightens into a cool drizzle.

“I’m sorry,” she mutters as soon as she comes to a stop beside her, not knowing what else there is to say. “I…”

Catherine shakes her head, turning toward the grave, away from her. Her voice is small, shaky. “Don’t be. He got what he deserved.”

That’s true, she knows, and so she doesn’t try to argue that. Michaela is silent for a while, standing at her side, before she sucks in a breath.

“I know you loved him,” is all she says. Still, Catherine doesn’t meet her eyes.

“Yeah, well. You must think I’m a freak,” she mumbles. “Creepy, incestuous, desperate…”

“I don’t think that.”

Finally, that prompts Catherine to look at her, and scoff. “You don’t have to lie to me.”

“I’m not. Lying.” Michaela pauses, struggling to find the right words. “I don’t think you’re a freak. You loved him. I think… I loved him, too, in a way. He had everyone fooled-”

“I knew, though,” Catherine cuts her off. “I-I knew. The whole time. And I was ready to… go to jail for him, give up _everything_ for him.” She gulps and lowers her eyes, choking on the words. “And I ended up there anyway. I was such an idiot.”

Michaela remembers, suddenly, what Laurel had told her. About feeling stupid – and she’d felt so, _so_ stupid, and maybe part of her still does. The memory of that is enough for her to draw closer to her, voice firm, chin raised.

“You’re _not_ an idiot,” she asserts. Catherine looks up at her, surprised. “He took advantage of you. He… H-he played you, clouded your judgement, _manipulated_ you… and that’s not your fault. None of that’s your fault.” She lowers her voice, a lump gathering in her throat. “You loved him. You were blinded by that. That’s not your fault, either.”

For a long moment, they’re silent. The graveyard is empty save for the two of them, the gravediggers, and Laurel, who she’d said she would meet in the car but apparently has decided to wait underneath a nearby willow tree instead, spectating from a distance. There’s no one to mourn Caleb except the two of them, and it pisses her off how inexplicably sad that makes her, how she can still have even a _scrap_ of sympathy for him.

“I really hated you, you know,” Catherine pipes up suddenly, eyes locked on the headstone. “I knew he liked you. I could just tell. I thought about telling you, a bunch of times. What he did. I was so… so _jealous_. After everything I did for him, everything I covered up. But that was his plan, all along. Get rid of me. He… h-he crawled into my bed every night and kissed me and told me he loved me, and all he ever wanted was me gone. Just half of a two-billion-dollar inheritance wasn’t enough for him. He had to have it all. God, he was so _selfish_ …” A sob cuts her off, rattling through her chest. Her eyes are set with fury, sudden determination. “I hate him. I hate him so much.”

Michaela hesitates, for a second, unsure what to do, before she settles on inching closer, reaching down, and taking her hand just like Laurel had, squeezing it tight.

“So do I,” she tells her, simply, as if maybe the fact will bring Catherine some kind of comfort – even though she knows, odds are, it won’t make a damn bit of difference.

 _So do I_ , she says, and it’s true. Caleb had started off as a mission for Annalise, and Michaela has never had trouble disassociating herself from her personal feelings for professional reasons – but he’d become different, somehow. Deeper. Wormed his way into her heart and taken up residence there. She’d actually believed he could understand her, that they had common ground. She remembers the way her heart had fluttered the first time he’d kissed her, how elated she’d been when he’d touched her, fucked her, made her come. He’d felt different; good, better than the rest of them. The only good thing in her life, after Aiden and the brief disaster that was her hookup with Levi, and all the blood on her hands.

And he’d been a monster all along, with just as much blood on his. He’d played the victim. Acted like such a _good guy_. She hates him for that the most, for making her feel sorry for him, like society had been out to persecute him unjustly when all along it had been completely, entirely _just_. She hates him, and at the same time she’s too tired to hate, anymore. She’s been full of anger and hate longer than she can remember; her whole life, maybe. She’s just… tired.

She hates him. One day she knows she won’t, anymore, that it’ll heal like all wounds too, no matter how deep it may seem now. She won’t care, won’t spare Caleb Hapstall so much as a single thought. She’ll barely remember him. And it’s that thought that consoles her, as Catherine leaves her and plods over to a waiting black Escalade, disappearing inside.

It’s not long after that that Laurel’s voice sounds out behind her.

“Hey.”

She turns, and sure enough, there she is: clad all in black, hair in loose curls, lips pursed in worry. Her black dress stands out in sharp contrast to her skin, making her look paler than usual.

“Hey,” she murmurs, and looks back to the grave as the casket continues its descent. “I’ll, uh… I’ll just be a second.”

“Take as long as you need,” Laurel replies, giving her a cheerless grin. “And… if it’s any consolation, you look beautiful in black.”

Michaela manages a watery laugh. “Thanks.”

Silence.

Then, she takes a look around at the empty gravesite, and frowns. “All that money he had. He had… everything you could ever want, and more. A-and there weren’t even enough people at his funeral to be pallbearers.”

“Money doesn’t buy happiness,” Laurel remarks, softly. “Or pallbearers, apparently.”

“Catherine’s in jail for him. Or… because of him. Because of _us_ ,” she bites out. “There has to be some way to get her out.”

“Michaela, us getting her out would mean proving that she didn’t shoot Annalise. And then…” She drifts off, grave. “The cops would come looking for who did.”

 _Who did_. Laurel did. Michaela stomach sours at the thought. She couldn’t stand that, ever. She isn’t used to needing people, relying on them when all they ever do is leave, but she needs Laurel; she’s sure of that now, can't even start to picture a tomorrow without her in it, so she shakes her head, letting out a breath

“Right. I know, I just…” She grits her teeth. “It’s not fair. None of it’s fair.” A sob swells in her throat. Michaela just barely manages to bite it back. “I’m glad he’s dead. Glad he’s gone – _God_ , I… I’m just still so _mad_ at him.”

“I know,” Laurel soothes, stepping forward and curling an arm around her waist from behind. “I know you are.”

Michaela breathes, for a while. That’s all she does: stands there and breathes, trying to compose herself, stamp down her anger. It won’t do anyone good for her to be angry, anymore; if she stays angry, keeps thinking about him… He wins. She won’t let him win. Caleb Hapstall is dead and gone and she _won’t let him win_. So she crouches down with her umbrella still in hand, and scoops up a handful of muddy earth with her other. It coats her palm, thick and sticky, and lands with a wet _plop_ when she tosses it down onto the casket, dirtying the single white rose Catherine had placed there.

_Earth to earth. Ashes to ashes._

_Dust to dust._

“He said we all belong in hell,” she mutters under her breath, more to herself than to Laurel. “Maybe he was right. But he belongs there, too.”

Michaela stands. She rises to her feet and wipes her palm off on a tissue Laurel hands her. And then she turns; turns and walks away with Laurel at her side, and doesn’t spare Caleb Hapstall’s grave even a single backward glance. Laurel reaches for her hand, again, and again Michaela takes it. Around them, the drizzle slows, bit by bit, until finally it lets up entirely – and if Michaela were prone to read into the poetic symbolism of things, she’d probably think that means something.

When they reach Laurel’s car, however, and Michaela turns and looks up, and finds a rainbow arcing across the sky, dazzling in all its brilliance, she can’t ignore _that_ bit of symbolism.

“Oh my God,” she laughs, still a bit shaky and unsure. Laurel follows her gaze, and chortles as soon as she sees it too, circling around the front of the car and coming to a stop in front of Michaela.

“Well,” Laurel says with a grin so wide it looks liable to break her face in half. “If that isn’t a divine sign of approval I don’t know what is.”

Laurel takes a step forward, leaning in towards Michaela and pressing her forehead to hers, in a simple, chaste show of affection that makes it a bit hard for her to breathe, right then. She can feel the other girl’s heartbeat like it’s her own, feel every twinge of every muscle inside her, and it all feels surreal, too good to be true. And it all feels so _beautiful,_ like every color in the world is brighter and more brilliant with Laurel at her side.

She snaps out of it relatively quickly, though, and scoffs. “Uh, according to every bible-thumper I’ve ever met – and I’ve met a _lot_ – God isn’t exactly crazy about gay people.”

“I don’t know why they think that,” Laurel jokes, and nods at the rainbow. “I mean, he _was_ the original inventor of the pride flag.”

Michaela tries to smile, but it ends up looking like more of a grimace. A stray tear she hadn’t felt form zig-zags its way down her cheek, and Laurel reaches up to brush it off with the pad of her thumb, leaning in close, then closer still, to press her lips down on hers. But Michaela panics, and backs away ever so slightly, surveying the area around them furtively; she hates herself for doing it, but the fear of being seen… It’s innate, ingrained in her skin.

Her reaction doesn’t seem to bother Laurel, though. Instead of disappointment her eyes are full of understanding, as if she can read her thoughts perfectly, and so she takes a look around too, then turns back to Michaela after discerning that there’s no one close enough to see them.

“No one’s here,” she assures her.

Michaela lowers her eyes, rubbing her lips together. “I know. I, um, I was just-”

“I get it,” Laurel cuts in, gently. “It’s okay.”

Michaela doesn’t know what, exactly, she’s telling her is okay. Okay to kiss her. Okay to be _afraid_ to kiss her, here. But whatever she means, it makes Michaela look up at her, diffidently, searching her eyes for the confidence she needs.

“Yeah?”

Laurel nods, and that confidence, that brazenness, flashes in her eyes. “Yeah.”

So Michaela kisses her. She zeros in on her lips and seizes them, not deeply or roughly, but with that same chasteness from before, slow and undemanding. She kisses her, understanding, suddenly, that it is _okay_. She kisses her right there, where anyone could walk by and see, and she’s surprised by how daring that makes her feel, how alive. Adrenaline courses through her veins, hot as lava. Michaela kisses her breathless, tastes that soft, minty taste that is so uniquely Laurel, tries to commit it to memory for no real reason other than that it’s part of her and she never wants to forget it, wants to carry it with her forever.

She wants people to see, too. The realization stuns her to her bones. She’s tired of closed doors, of hiding this thing she’s hidden her whole damn life like some shameful secret. She wants _everyone_ to see. Aiden. Levi. Annalise. Frank. Everyone. She wants them all to know that she’s Michaela Pratt, and she’s kissing Laurel Castillo, and she doesn’t give one single solitary fuck what anyone has to say about that, now or ever again.

They break apart, not long after. They look up at the sky, and the rainbow is still there, brighter now, hovering over them with all its colors like a blessing, and it feels like one, to Michaela. Not that they need a blessing, or even particularly want one – but still. It’s a nice touch, from whatever higher power is in control of the universe.

So Michaela’s eyes fall back down to Laurel, and she smiles, bright and beautiful. “Let’s go home.”

Laurel smiles back. And they do.


	18. XVIII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Normally I alternate POV’s for chapters, but I accidentally started writing this in Michaela’s POV before I realized it was supposed to be in Laurel’s, and I just decided to stick with it because I love writing Michaela, so. Enjoy ;)
> 
> Thank you again for all your lovely comments!! They're such a joy to read and really do motivate me to keep this fic going when everything in my life is super hectic.

“I’m gonna fail. I-I’m gonna fail every single one of these exams. I’m screwed! I’m _screwed_ , Laurel.”

“Figuratively or literally? Because I’m more than willing to make the second one happen,” Laurel quips, as she saunters over to where Michaela sits on the office couch and sinks down next to her, holding out a steaming mug of coffee. “Just say the word.”

Michaela narrows her eyes and gives her a _Look_ , but takes it. “Ha ha. Now is not the time for jokes, okay? Not when I’ve got a million outlines to look over, and chapters to re-read, and… flashcards to make, and – how are you not worried about finals? Like, at all?”

Laurel leans back and frowns at her. “I thought you weren’t worried.”

“I was…” Michaela exhales sharply, lowering her eyes down to the outline in her lap to avoid looking at Laurel. “I was pretending not to be worried. So you’d think I was… I don’t know. More chill.”

“Aw, you pretended not to be a huge nerd so I would think you were cool? That’s adorable.”

Michaela rolls her eyes. “Shut up. Literally – keep your voice down. Annalise is in her office.”

“Mmm,” Laurel hums, raising a skeptical eyebrow and hardening her features in what Michaela can only assume is supposed to be a bad impression of Annalise. “And I’m pretty sure you’re supposed to be finding precedents for our case instead of doing all that useless studying, _Miss Pratt_.”

“Okay, it’s our last week here. It’s not like she’s going to fire me – and I’d rather not flunk out of all my classes because of this hell job, thank you very much.”

Laurel leans back again and pulls a pile of folders into her lap, with the pretense of appearing busy. “You’re right. If we fail law school, what are we gonna have to show for all the murders?”

Michaela makes herself roll her eyes again, but smiles before she can help herself, pulling out her phone to check the time – which, unsurprisingly, is past midnight. _Way_ past midnight. Past midnight to the point that she should most likely either A) be sleeping, for once in her goddamn life, or B) studying for the veritable avalanche of finals that are crashing down on her. Everyone else went home for the night an hour ago, and normally Michaela would like nothing more than to go with them, but she’s not exactly able to focus on studying with ungracious houseguest of the year Connor still sleeping on her couch and watching reruns of _The Bachelorette_ at an unnecessarily loud volume at all hours of the day.

He claims to love the drama and copious amount of shirtless dudes. Michaela knows it’s really to piss her off.

And it’s working.

With a sigh, she puts the thought out of her head and refocuses on highlighting her Civpro outline, making a streak of neon yellow across a line about subject matter jurisdiction. Laurel, who has – as she’s recently discovered – about the attention span of a six year-old, fidgets next to her and scoots a bit closer; a proximity that quickly proves to be the only thing Michaela _can_ focus on. Mostly because Laurel is in a skirt – an almost too-short skirt, with bare legs that she can see perfectly out of her peripheral vision, and can’t stop eyeing no matter how hard she tries to ignore them.

It’s a workplace distraction. It really is.

“Are you… almost done with that?” she asks. Michaela can tell she makes every effort to keep the question sounding innocuous, when really it’s far from it.

She doesn’t look up. “No. And aren’t you supposed to be working too?”

“Me? I gave Annalise the precedents I found an hour ago.”

At that, Michaela finally does look up. “Then what are you still doing here?”

Laurel just shrugs, and pops a piece of trail mix into her mouth from the open bag on the coffee table, grinning cheekily. “Keeping you company.”

“Well, what you’re _doing_ is distracting me. So stop.”

Laurel feigns confusion, and brushes her thigh up against Michaela’s accidentally-on-purpose. “Stop what? I’m just sitting here.”

“You know what you’re doing.”

Laurel sits up, setting aside her coffee and trail mix, and leaning over towards her again, batting those eyes of hers in a way that Michaela tries to pretend is irritating her, but is really only making her sweat, heat creeping onto her cheeks and making its way down to her neck.

She plays coy. “I really don’t.”

Laurel is moving closer, zeroing in, like a little heat seeking missile. Laurel is slowly, ever so slowly, reaching up and brushing her hair aside to expose her neck – and before Michaela has time to react, Laurel is pressing her lips down there, seeking out her pulse point and sucking at the hot, fluttering patch of skin. Heat floods her body the instant she does, dizzying, pooling inexorably lower and lower, and Michaela swallows thickly, somehow scourging up enough willpower to keep her eyes on her outlines, although her vision blurs a bit.

It should work, in theory, just like ignoring a child. Ignore Laurel, and Laurel will stop.

Unsurprisingly, Laurel _doesn’t_ stop.

If anything, being ignored only encourages her onslaught, and she murmurs against her skin, breath hot as steam, so hot Michaela swears it scalds her skin and leaves a mark, “Take a break. You’re stressed. You’ve earned it.”

“I’m not-” Laurel nips at her skin with the scrapes of her teeth right then, and Michaela sucks in a sharp breath, the pain soft as the prick of a pin and not at all unpleasant. “I-I’m not failing my exams because you’re too horny to keep it in your pants.”

“You’re wound too tight,” she purrs – actually fucking _purrs_ – and moves her lips up behind her ear. “Take a break. Relax. It’s been so long, since we…”

So long, since they’ve fucked. Or had sex. Or – made love. Michaela isn’t quite sure which terminology to use at the present, with this whole not-dating but also _not_ not-dating situation, but _fucked_ , oddly enough, seems most appropriate, albeit the least romantic. It hasn’t been long, in reality; a week, maybe, but it’s felt like ages to her, being left high and not-so-dry with the stress of school and exams crashing down on her, and really all she’s been wanting is some relief in the form of one Laurel Castillo.

Her grip on her highlighter goes slack, and it tumbles to the ground, rolling under an armchair. Her head tilts back, almost of its own volition. She’s trembling with restraint, now, listening to Laurel’s heated words in her ear, feeling Laurel’s hand inch its way further and further south with a clear destination. She tries to squeeze her legs shut, like a good girl, not like some kind of _slut_ , and for a while, she succeeds. She should get a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for best self-control, really, because Laurel’s dirty talk doesn’t let up; she keeps going. She’s determined. She’s a vixen, a seductress when she chooses to be, so far from _the quiet one_ now that a laugh almost bubbles up in Michaela’s chest.

“I miss you,” she says, and her voice is almost a pant, a whimper. “I miss how you taste, I miss how you feel… I miss spreading you out. _Eating_ you out. I miss making you come, _God_ , I miss hearing you…”

Her outlines are the next thing to go. They scatter at her feet, hours of hard work on organization wasted, and shit, she should’ve stapled them in order, what had she been thinking? Clearly she hadn’t been; even less than she’s thinking now. Her mind is swiftly booting down, each synapse flicking off one by one like breakers in a fuse box. That’s not an effect many people have on her; her mind is an always-switched-on supercomputer, whirring and buzzing at all hours of the day, but around Laurel… It shuts off. Powers down into a state of semi-sleep, where all she can feel is the sensations between her legs, in her clit, in the hardening of her nipples; those base, primal desires.

“Oh, _fuck_ , I should’ve stapled those…” she laments, and Laurel can’t help but chuckle, that soft, sensual chuckle that makes her arms break out into a field of gooseflesh.

“I’m offering you sex and you’re thinking about staples?”

Michaela’s eyes fall shut, a whine escaping her throat, her body angling itself towards Laurel without her permission. “Screw you – _ah_.”

“Oh, believe me, you _will_ ,” Laurel promises, and gives her a positively feral grin. Her lips are by her ear again, hands moving up to graze the undersides of her breasts. “How do you want it? Me to go down on you? Or do you want my fingers? Or…” She drifts off, eyes alight with a predatory gleam. “You wanna sit on my face and ride my mouth and… come until you can’t sit up anymore?”

Oh, fuck. God. _Fuck_ , they haven’t done that yet – and given their current location, that isn’t exactly a feasible option, but she’ll file that one away for future reference.

In the _very_ near future.

Though she has no clue how she will, or how to even _start_ , Michaela tries to snap herself out of it. Annalise is in her office, just a few yards away. She wonders if she can hear. She probably can’t – Laurel knows how to be quiet when circumstances necessitate it – but still. It’s risky. Anyone could walk in at any time – Bonnie, most likely. She’s not an exhibitionist. She most definitely would _not_ get off on having sex at the office. No sir. That’s not her. Sex is for the bedroom, and… Well, bar bathrooms, occasionally.

That doesn’t count. That was _once_.

Michaela is about halfway done trying to talk herself out of doing this when Laurel pounces without warning, leaning in and kissing her on the mouth, in a collision of teeth and tongue and spit that’s borderline overwhelming, and tastes like coffee and nutty trail mix. She clambers forward onto Michaela’s lap, straddling her and reaching back to curl a fist into her hair, tugging her closer, _closer_ , like simply being close is not enough and she needs to achieve some level beyond that. It’s a hungry kiss, like Laurel is trying to consume her and she’s trying to consume her right back, and she feels that same hunger between her legs, hunger in her aching clit, in her pussy, almost embarrassingly wet and dampening her panties more and more by the second. She shifts, sighing against her lips in frustration at the barrier of fabric between her legs, blocking Laurel’s hand from simply reaching down and sliding two fingers into her.

She never wears pants to the office. Just her luck this would happen _the one time_ she does.

“We can’t-” A moan cuts Michaela off, high-pitched and fluttery. She pulls away, shaking her head with sudden resoluteness. “We can’t do this here-”

“We won’t,” Laurel replies easily, and springs to her feet, tugging her right up with her. “C’mon.”

It’s so swift that Michaela makes a sound of surprise, almost knocking over her mug of coffee where it teeters precariously on the edge of the coffee table, forgotten and growing cold. She doesn’t need it; the adrenaline she gets from being with Laurel is better than any kind of caffeine, and she’s so awake now it hurts, every square inch of her body alert, humming and buzzing. For a moment she’s afraid Laurel is about to pull her up the stairs to the bedroom, and that’s one place she’d definitely have to veto; if there’s one sure-fire way to make sure she gets blacklisted by every reputable firm in Philadelphia and never works in this town again, it’d be to have sex at Annalise Keating’s house, in Annalise’s Keating’s bed. Not to mention the hundreds of couplings that’ve inevitably taken place there over the years, with the hordes of hormonal interns parading in and out of this house.

Some inevitably involving Asher.

Oh _God_ that’s a buzzkill.

But no – they’re going for the kitchen. Laurel’s doesn’t kiss her on the way; she seems intent on getting there as soon as possible, not wasting even a millisecond of time. The room is dim when they step in; the only lights that are turned on are the ones over the counters, which don’t do much to illuminate the room. It works more than well enough for them, though, and Michaela is upon Laurel before the other girl has time to say a word, pushing her back against the fridge, kissing her. The inside of her skull is boiling, her body set all alight with one low, singular burn. She kisses her like she can’t breathe otherwise, with all the desperation of a drowning woman, and she thinks she was, before all this, before Laurel; drowning in everything, not having the slightest clue how to stay afloat.

Laurel had changed that. Changed everything. She’d been right under her nose, the entire time, and they’d wasted _so much_ time. She could’ve had this months ago.

She has no _clue_ how she waited so long for this. For her. Her whole life. Always.

“We’re _so_ gonna get caught,” Michaela manages in between kisses. “Oh my God, this is crazy-”

“ _Getting caught_ is the chance we take,” Laurel chuckles. Michaela moves her sideways, shifting her over to the counter, and when Laurel reaches back to steady herself something clatters – something metal, giving a low _clang_. Neither of them even flinch. “Now, are you doing me or am I doing you?”

Michaela moves away briefly, quirking an eyebrow. “Uh, you seduce _me_ , you make _me_ drop my outlines, you make _me_ come first.”

“Would you shut up-” Laurel kisses her, roughly, with a wildness she hasn’t used on her before, “about your outlines?”

So she does. _Shutting up_ , as it turns out, is remarkably easy when Laurel is kissing her, and when she’s so aroused she’s on the brink of straight up ripping her pants off and tugging Laurel’s head between her legs and holding it there until she’s come too many times to count. Again, she curses their location; they need a bed, a bed for her to spread Laurel out on and for Laurel to spread her out on, not these unforgivingly cold marble countertops, but they’re both nothing if not resourceful, and they’ll make do.  

And they’re just about to start _making do_ when the door connecting Annalise’s office to the kitchen creaks open, and light floods in.

Laurel is sucking on her neck when it happens, so hard she’s sure she’ll have marks in the morning, her hands reaching down to tug at the zipper on her pants and be rid of the cumbersome things. Immediately, and with a gasp of surprise, Michaela shoves her off and to the side, back against the counter next to her, and both their eyes go wide, like a pair of deer caught fucking in the headlights.

Part of her had been expecting this; part of her hadn’t. _All_ of her had been too wrapped up in Laurel to think logically, and remember that this house is old, with paper-thin walls and not a whole lot of places to secretly fornicate without detection. Part of her had been hoping, against all odds, that it wouldn’t be Annalise who found them.

And that part is shit out of luck – because it is.

Annalise stops in her tracks, at once. She doesn’t look surprised; Michaela’s not sure she’s ever seen anything truly surprise Annalise. If anything, she simply looks annoyed, her eyes darkening, and Michaela goes so still that she may as well be a statue. Which she wishes she were, right now. Wishes she were _anywhere_ but here.

Oh, God. Oh God. They’re screwed.

And they are so, _so_ fired.

“Professor Keating,” she blurts out, wiping the cooling saliva off her lips hurriedly. Laurel hadn’t quite gotten to her zipper yet, thank God. She’s not sure she could handle the humiliation of having to zip up her pants in front of Annalise. “Um, I… we…”

Annalise just stares at her, expression unreadable but very clearly not pleased. She doesn’t have to cut Michaela off; she does it on her own, realizing quickly that there’s no point in trying to talk her way out of this – unless she can somehow convince her that she was searching for precedents by sticking her tongue down Laurel’s throat. Not knowing what to say, she glances sideways at Laurel, who looks equally as much like a kid caught with her hand in the cookie jar – only this was a _very_ different jar of cookies.

_Shit. Shit shit shit shit shit._

“My office,” is all Annalise says. “Both of you. Now.”

Those words, somehow, are more terrifying than anything else. Annalise doesn’t elaborate; she just turns right back around and strides back into her office, closing the doors behind her. Everything in Michaela’s word feels like it’s sinking; her heart is somewhere in the cavity her stomach should occupy, and her stomach about ready to fall out of her ass, and – shit. God. _Fucking fuck_. She’s really done it now.

“Oh my God,” she finally sputters, once she’s sure they’re alone. She feels about ready to burst into tears. “Oh my _God_ , Laurel!”

“Stay calm,” Laurel tries to tell her, though she doesn’t look very calm herself. “Just… stay calm. Worst case scenario… she yells at us, and-”

“ _Fires_ us, and we never work in this town again!” Michaela hisses. She can feel a panic attack rapidly hurtling toward her, like a freight train. “Oh God, oh God, oh God.”

Laurel reaches out, sucking a breath, taking her hands, and squeezing them. “Hey. It’s… it’s all right. I got you. Always. Okay?”

Michaela isn’t the least bit reassured by that, but she nods nonetheless, choking down the bile rising in her throat and damming up her tears; she knows full well waterworks won’t faze Annalise. Laurel summons up a weak grin to send her way, then takes a step over to the doors, squaring her shoulders, raising her chin, and straightening her back, like a condemned woman approaching the chopping block, unafraid.

Michaela sulks along behind her, with markedly less enthusiasm.  

 

~

 

“So. Do you two have anything to say for yourselves?”

Michaela feels like a kid in the principal’s office, again: standing in front of the desk, eyes downcast. There are chairs in front of Annalise’s desk, of course. Chairs they could be using, to feel a bit less childish and perhaps a bit more like adults on an even playing field, but the look they'd received upon entering had made it abundantly clear they were not to use them.

So they hadn’t. Michaela’s expecting a tirade. She can feel it coming. Everything about Annalise Keating right now screams _oncoming storm_ , and she’s bracing herself as best she can.

They’re silent. It’s a rhetorical question. Words aren’t going to do them a bit of good, will probably only dig them into a deeper hole of shit. Michaela has learned this year that staying quiet is often the best tactic when facing an angry Annalise, and apparently so has Laurel, because neither of them answer. The only sound to be heard is the rustling of Laurel’s skirt as she shifts her weight from one leg to another awkwardly, shrinking beneath her gaze – because Annalise may be just one woman but she has the might of armies to demolish nearly anything in her path, including the both of their sorry asses.

Annalise doesn’t yell, surprisingly. Her voice is low and measured and firm; biting, but not yelling.

“I don’t know when you all decided that this house is some kind of brothel where you’re free to have sex wherever you want. Just because it’s your last week doesn’t mean you’re allowed to slack off and get up to all sorts of God knows what in my kitchen.”

Laurel finally pipes up. “It won’t happen again. Ever.”

That gives Michaela the confidence to join in. “I… I-if you’re going to fire us, I-”

“I’m not going to fire you, Miss Pratt,” Annalise retorts, lowering her voice, her shoulders sagging with what she thinks is exhaustion. She plops down into her desk chair, reaching for a bottle of vodka and pouring herself a glass. “I’m not happy. But I’m not going to fire you. If I fired everyone who’d had sex in this office…” She drifts off, taking a sip. “I wouldn’t have any employees left.”

This is not how Michaela had expected this to go down, to say the least. Before even stepping inside she’d run about ten different scenarios of how this could happen in her head – most of them ending with them losing their jobs and leaving the office in disgrace; not a single one of them had been remotely close to this. She’d been expecting harshness, and this is cold but it isn’t _harsh_ , nowhere near Annalise’s usual version of harsh, at least. She can’t pinpoint why, has no idea why she’d find it in herself to go easy on them – when they were very obviously all but ready to bang on a surface she regularly prepares food on. She should, logically, be yelling. Michaela wouldn’t blame her.

Why isn’t she _yelling_?

Annalise is silent, for a moment, and the silence is heavy. She stares down into her glass with a contemplative look on her face, as if her mind is a million miles away, before she finally lets out a breath like she’s been holding it for years and looks up at them, lips pursed into a thin line.

“The world is hard for women,” she tells them, over the rim of her glass. “It’s even harder for women who love women. I know from experience.”

Michaela frowns, and looks at Laurel, who does the same. Neither of them want to ask for clarification and rock the admittedly very fragile boat in which they’re standing – but finally, Laurel’s curiosity gets the best of her.

“From… experience?”

Annalise doesn’t say anything, not at first. Instead, she reaches down, rummages through one of her desk drawers, and withdraws a strip of what looks like photo booth pictures. She sets it down before them without a word, without explanation, then gets to her feet, circles around the desk with her glass in hand, and goes for the door, stopping briefly to glance back at the two of them.

“It’s your last week; I’m letting you off with a warning. Don’t do that again,” Annalise orders, before something almost like amusement flickers in her eyes, buried deep and barely visible. “Or at least, if you do, don’t let me catch you.”

Michaela waits until the door closes behind Annalise to reach for the yellowed strip of photos, holding them up, perplexed. It’s Annalise, years younger. _Much_ younger, but it isn’t the sight of her that makes Michaela freeze; it’s who she’s with: Eve Rothlo. Nate’s lawyer; much younger too, with long, flowing brown hair parted down the middle and a blindingly bright smile. In the first two pictures they’re just smiling, making funny faces at the camera. Eve is wearing some gaudy neon pink glasses and Annalise a green feather boa, which look like party favors. In the third they’re leaning in close, foreheads pressed against each other, smiles much more subdued, intimate. Annalise has a smile on her face unlike any Michaela has ever seen. Soft. Sweet, like it’s one she reserved for Eve and Eve only – like she was the only person in existence for her right then, in that little snapshot of time.

In the fourth, they’re kissing. And she gets it, then.

Michaela flips the picture over. On the back, _New Year’s Eve_ _1988_ is scrawled in smudged blue ink. She runs a quick mental calculation; they’d been in law school that year, and when she turns it back over she can’t help but be struck by the realization that she and Laurel are staring at their doppelgangers.

At themselves, in another life.

Beside her, Laurel shakes her head and mutters, “Oh my God. They were…”

“Us,” Michaela finishes for her, astounded. “They were us.”


	19. XIX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So if it wasn't already clear, this is going to diverge a LOT from what's happening in season three/what happened over the summer since this fic was finished before the premiere. I'm not super psyched about the state of things in canon (namely the way they're trying to force Wes/Laurel and Michaela/Asher ew), so I guess this fic is my way of repairing it!! 
> 
> Lauraela rise and thanks 4 reading.

By some miracle, she survives exams, and the endless, hellish cycle of interviews for summer internships too.

Realistically, she isn’t sure how well she does – on the exams or interviews – but Laurel’s proud of herself; proud of them _all_ , for being complicit in several murders, somehow managing to not have multiple mental breakdowns because of the fact, and come out on top in the end. Even Wes seems a bit perkier these days, which she’s immeasurably happy to see.

“I know it’s been an interesting year, to say the least,” Annalise tells them the morning of their last day, as they’re all gathered in the living room, munching on celebratory donuts Connor and Michaela had chipped in to buy on their way to work. “And a hard one. I may not have said it a lot, but thank you, for all your hard work. I know I’m not always an easy boss, and this isn’t an apology for that, but… thank you.” She pauses, then raises her eyebrows. “And I’m only gonna say that once, so don’t ask me to repeat it.”

Laurel chuckles under her breath. Asher, out of nowhere, pops up from the couch and stretches out his arms.

“C’mon. Group hug time!”

Annalise snorts. “I don’t think so.”

Michaela just stares at him, recoiling slightly. “Uh, no way.”

Apparently, Asher must have some kind of death wish, because he strides over to Annalise and bear-hugs her before she can protest again, a big, goofy smile on his face. Annalise just lets her arms hang at her sides, looking like she’d rather be dead than where she is right now, and Connor is quick to join in, yanking Michaela over with him against her will. Finally, Laurel rolls her eyes at the ridiculousness of it all and looks at Wes, nodding towards the circle, and he gives her a little grin, nodding back and reaching his arms out. Bonnie joins in last, scoffing and muttering something sarcastic under her breath, before piling on, too.

“Let’s go Team K5!” Asher chants, like he’s trying to rally a football team.

No one plays along – except Connor, who gives a weak _woot_. Asher doesn’t seem bothered, and they break apart not long after, the show of odd, murderous solidarity over. Laurel can’t fight an inexplicable feeling of emptiness in the pit of her stomach when they do; that faint twinge, like something is missing here. Some _one_.

Frank.

The name makes her tense up, her face falling. She misses him. Hates herself for missing him. Wants him back – and at the same time, never wants to see his face again in her life. She deflates a little at the thought as Annalise orders them back to work, making her way over to the couch and sinking down on it, while the others mill about in the next room around Bonnie’s desk, where Connor has stashed the donuts.

“Donut? With sprinkles. Your favorite.”

A voice startles Laurel out of her reverie, and she looks up to find Michaela standing over her, holding out a donut with white frosting and multi-colored sprinkles on a napkin. For a moment Laurel just looks at her, before she reaches out and takes it, smiling.

“How’d you know sprinkles are my favorite?”

Michaela shrugs and takes a seat next to her. “Sprinkles are everyone’s favorite. They make them taste better. It’s been… scientifically proven.”

“Mmm,” Laurel hums, taking a bite. “Wouldn’t doubt it.”

They’re seated close to each other; at a slightly closer than _friendly_ distance. Even in front of everyone Laurel can’t help the way her eyes burn into Michaela’s, the way her eyes drop to admire her breasts and her body and _God_ , really just all of her, the way being near her makes her feel like she has some thrilling secret – and they _are_ a secret. Connor is the only one who knows; Asher is far too oblivious to figure it out, and although Laurel suspects Wes might be starting to pick up on something, he hasn’t mentioned it, nd probably never will, if he thinks he’d risk offending her.

She should tell him. She really should; she doesn’t want to hide things from Wes, ever, but he’s been more closed off to her since his father, standoff-ish, in a way she can tell isn’t some temporary mood. He’s changed. He’s different, fundamentally, deep down, somehow. They don’t talk as much, and she knows he occupies most of his time putting together theories about his father’s death, hidden away in his apartment.

She hates hiding things from him. She hates hiding things from Michaela, too. Most of the time… she tries not to think about that.

Michaela’s voice, again, draws her out of her thoughts. “I can’t believe this year is over. I thought it’d never end.”

“I’m not going to be leaving this office in a body bag, at least. So I’m counting it as a success.”

She scoffs. “Of course you are. You hear back from any of the places you interviewed at yet?”

“Two. One was just a bunch of ambulance chasers, which was my backup plan in case nothing else came through. The other firm does mostly divorce. I said no to both.” She pauses, shrugging. “It didn’t feel right. And, I mean, I figured seeing divorce every day would kill my belief in true love for good, so.”

Something twinkles in Michaela’s eyes. She lowers her voice, so the others who have congregated in the next room won’t hear. “You, um… You believe in true love?”

Laurel grins; a tiny grin, the slightest upward quirk of her lips. Michaela tries to play the question off casually, but it’s a loaded one and they both know it. “Well, I have to believe in something these days, right?” _And it sure as hell isn’t God. Might as well be love._

They’re silent, for a minute, and they let it wash over them in waves, not at all uncomfortable. Michaela breaks it by clearing her throat, and reaching out to grab her coffee.

“You interviewed at Sterling though, right? Other big firms?”

“Oh, yeah. Annalise on my resume got me into any door I wanted, but… I don’t think any of them will want me. They want the gunners. The big dogs.”

“Well, who says you’re not a _big dog_?”

Laurel snorts. “I’m not. _You’re_ a big dog. That’s why they already hired you.”

It’s true; Michaela had been the first of the group to secure a summer position, at the firm she’d been lusting after all year: Sterling & White, the biggest of the big dogs in Philly, notoriously ruthless and the perfect place for her. Laurel had been happy for her, if a bit envious; Sterling had been one of her top picks, too. The do-gooder Laurel Castillo of a year ago never would’ve gone for a firm like them in a million years: high-profile, all glitz and glamour, richer than God and working with even richer clients – people like her father. Somehow, they’d worked their way onto her radar anyway.

“I don’t think I would've fit in there, anyway,” she muses aloud, more to herself than to anyone else. “Maybe it’s dumb, but… I want to work for a firm that does some good, for once. That’s why I came here in the first place – and you can call me stupid, idealistic, whatever, but-”

“I don’t think that’s stupid,” Michaela tells her, earnestly. “I like that about you. You’re a humanitarian.”

“I’ve literally helped kill people. I don’t think I get to call myself a humanitarian.”

“Nobody’s perfect.” Michaela pauses, taking a look around the room with slightly narrowed eyes, then sighs. “Is it weird that I’m kind of going to miss this place?”

“We made a lot of memories here,” Laurel remarks, grinning wryly. “Some good. Some bad.”

Michaela cocks an eyebrow. “Most bad. I prefer not to reminisce.”

“Me either,” Laurel makes herself chirp, and swings her legs sideways suddenly, plonking them down unceremoniously onto Michaela’s lap. “I’ll miss working with you, you know.”

“I’ll miss you too, but – get off of me, Laurel, I’m not your footrest-”

“You’re not?”

Michaela tries to act annoyed, but chortles before she can, her features relaxing into an easy smile. “I hate you.”

Laurel is about to open her mouth when Connor and Asher stride over, taking their seats in the armchairs across from the couch. Asher looks at the two of them for a moment – Laurel slouched back against the armrest with her legs in Michaela’s lap – then glances at Connor, before finally narrowing his eyes and asking, “Wait, since when are you two besties?”

“Oh, you didn’t get the formal announcement?” Laurel quips. “I’ve replaced Connor as her new BFF.”

“Uh, false. No one will ever replace me,” Connor declares, then mutters, quieter, “More like BFF with benefits, anyway.”

Asher, thankfully, doesn’t hear that, and occupies himself with shoving his glazed donut into his mouth. Wes sidles too in not long after, and they eat for a while, chatting happily, while Bonnie and Annalise are out of sight in the latter’s office.

“Well, it’s been one hell of a first year of law school. And, if I do say so myself, I think we _definitely_ know how to get away with murder now,” Connor remarks, leaning back with a handful of powdered donut holes in his palm. “Also I can’t wait until I never have to see any of your faces ever again.”

Michaela rolls her eyes. “Oh, please. You love us.”

“I’ve had to see you guys sixty plus hours a week for the last nine months,” Connor remarks. “Not gonna lie: I’ve _heavily_ contemplated taking you guys out.”

“That’s one way to up your class rank,” Laurel chimes in, between bites of her donut. “Just kill everyone ahead of you.”

They all laugh. That even gets a few half-hearted chuckles out of Wes.

“Okay, we really need to stop casually joking about murder,” Michaela reminds them, and Laurel knows she’s right; it’s become something of a habit among the five of them. Dark humor is pretty much the only thing that can get her to laugh these days, and if she were in the mood to dwell on things she’d probably dwell on how incredibly fucked-up that is.

Connor’s laugh could be described as maniacal, and he echoes that sentiment aloud. “We’re _so_ fucked up.”

They laugh again at that, more muffled this time, and are quiet for a moment, the truth settling over them like a somber dark cloud.

Asher, as always, doesn’t take the hint and join in on the moment of silence, and immediately tries to lighten the mood. “What’re y’all’s plans for the summer? Daytona Beach? Bora Bora? Getting hammered and banging beach babes every day of the _week_?”

“Interning,” Michaela shoots back, a bit teasing, a bit seriously. “Because unlike you, our last names aren’t gonna get us a job after graduation with zero experience.”

“I’m going home,” Connor announces. That seems to be the first Michaela has heard of this, and Laurel sees confusion flash in her eyes. “I had a few phone interviews for firms there. I need time to find a new place, and… Get the _fuck_ out of this hellhole, Frank-style.”

As is the usual, everyone’s eyes fly to Laurel with the mention of Frank’s name, giving her surreptitious, cautious looks, like she’s a bomb about to go off.

But she isn’t a bomb, and she isn’t about to go off. Instead, she just makes herself smile. “Good idea.”

“No lie though – I’m gonna miss you guys,” Asher says, suddenly sentimental. “You’re like… like my family, yo.”

“So are we all finally agreeing on this, now?” Laurel asks, grinning. “That we’re actual _friends_?”

“I’m in,” Wes speaks up. “If we’re not friends by now, then what are we?”

“Mortal enemies,” Michaela mutters under her breath, sarcastically. “What’s next? We all get matching friendship bracelets?”

Connor leans forward and sweeps his eyes around the circle, before exhaling sharply. “I say, fine with me. We’re _friends_. But FYI, if anyone outside this room ever finds out about this, I’ll deny it to the death.”

“Oh, yeah,” Laurel agrees. “Of course. And I vote _yes_ on the matching friendship bracelets, for the record.”

It’s a pact. A pact; lighthearted on the surface, but tinged with something cold and dark and sinister further down. They won’t go to the cops, any of them. If one of them gets out of line, starts losing it, they’ll silence them, by any means necessary. If one of them does tattle, the others will pin it on them, throw them to the wolves, and never look back. That’s the agreement. Not friendship. Survival.

And hell will have to freeze over before Laurel calls Asher Millstone her friend, anyway.

 

~

 

 

The next day, she gets a call.

The Philly Public Defender’s office. They offer her a spot in their summer internship program. To help people. She’ll be _helping_ people, like she’s wanted all along; underprivileged people who society and the justice system consistently screw over, leave to fend for themselves. She may not always be helping innocents, she knows that. Luckily, her moral code has been mucked up enough this year that that no longer really bothers her.

So, ecstatic, she accepts.

She ends up back at her apartment that night with Michaela, rummaging around in her cabinets before withdrawing a bottle of champagne, two glasses, and striding over to where the other girl stands by the counter, eyes dark and half-lidded in a way that makes it pretty clear she expects celebratory sex is to follow.

Which it _is_. But for now-

“Cristal,” she announces, holding the bottle up for emphasis. “2004.”

Michaela reaches out and examines it, mouth agape. “Oh my God, how much was this?”

“Ask my father.” Laurel shrugs, nonchalant, prying off the wire cage and fiddling with the cork. “As if he _actually_ has time to read his credit card statements.”

She feels tipsy already, even though she hasn’t had a drop of alcohol; drunk solely on triumph, the look in Michaela’s eyes, and the heady scent of her vanilla perfume. She’s too distracted by those eyes to put much effort into dislodging the cork carefully, and the bottle opens with a _pop_ , a gush of champagne soaking her hand and making them both jump, then dissolve into laughter.

“Oh _shit_ , that scared me,” she cackles, bringing her fingers up to her mouth to lick them clean.

Michaela scoffs, teasingly. “You know, for a rich girl, I would’ve thought you’d be better at popping champagne.”

Laurel opens her mouth to reply, but the words die on her tongue when Michaela moves forward all at once, reaching out, taking her hand, and bending down to slowly, sensuously, suck the stickiness off her fingers. It makes Laurel freeze, a spark traversing a direct line from Michaela’s tongue to her body, like she’s been shocked by a jolt of static electricity through a wire, but in a soft, pleasant way that makes her simmer, makes her squirm and press her thighs together as if to dam up the wetness gathering between them. Michaela glances up at her as she works, grinning around her fingers, pupils dialated, eyes dancing with mischief – and that one look is all it takes for Laurel to launch herself at her, yanking her fingers out of her mouth and replacing them with her lips. It happens so fast that Michaela squeaks, and Laurel kisses the sound greedily, so ravenous for this girl that she barely recognizes herself.

She almost drops the champagne. She all but slams it down on the counter, pushing it away.

But Michaela breaks away shortly afterward, in one swift, abrupt, newly determined movement that surprises Laurel. Frowning, she meets her eyes, and concern is written all over Michaela’s face, wrought and carved into every feature, like something has just occurred to her and scared the hell out of her.

“Can we just…” Michaela sucks in a breath, shaking her head. “I don’t…”

Laurel moves in closer, voice tender, every bit as breathless. “What’s wrong?”

“You’d never lie to me, right?” she asks, suddenly. “You’re always… honest, with me?”

The question makes Laurel tense.

She can’t tell her that. Can’t tell her she hasn’t lied to her – isn’t currently ly _ing_ to her. Both are true. It catches her off guard, wherever this is coming from, and she has a rare moment of speechlessness, not able to summon up a single word in the English language to match what she wants to say. Wes and shooting Annalise. Frank and Lila. Technically they’re not lies; just information she hasn’t seen fit to share, things she’d held back for the good of everyone, buried deep in some unmarked location in her subconscious she tries not to visit often. Lies of omission – that’s all they are.

But Laurel’s been in law school long enough to know that lies of omission are just as bad as actual lies. Maybe worse, in this case.

Finally, she settles on asking, “What… um, what do you mean?”

“I-I don’t know, I just…” Michaela lowers her eyes. Laurel drops her hands down to her waist, still holding her close. “I know we’re not serious. I know we don’t… we’re not labelling this thing, but… I can’t be with someone else who lies to me. After Aiden. Levi. Caleb, I…” She drifts off, so vulnerable and broken down and deflated that it makes Laurel want to do nothing but kiss away her every worry. “I can’t do that, again. I need something honest. Something _real_.”

“This _is_ real,” Laurel urges. Michaela swallows, eyes flicking downward again. Laurel rubs her lips together, before leaning down, leaning closer. “I’d never lie to you, okay? I promise.”

Michaela’s voice is as small as a child’s. “You sure?”

No, she isn’t. Laurel absolutely _is not_. She wants nothing more, right then, than to tell Michaela everything. Unburden herself. It’s been killing her, eating her alive from the inside, like a parasite. She can’t tell her about Wes. She has to protect Wes – and she doesn’t have to protect Frank, and she doesn't want to, not even a little, but with Lila…

She has to protect Michaela, from that truth. The very thing she wants she can’t have; it’d ruin her, knowing everything they’d done to Sam hadn’t been justified at all, that he’d been innocent all along, that they’d murdered an innocent man for nothing. It’s better this way.

It is. Laurel knows it is, without a doubt in her mind, and so she nods, and musters up a weak grin, pressing her forehead up against hers.

“I’m sure,” she lies to her face, lies through her teeth; lies with a smile on her face, and hopes it doesn’t sound like the blatant lie it is. It must not, because Michaela kisses her not long after, slow and sweet, trusting.

She kisses her, and it tastes bitter. It tastes like a lie, too.


	20. XX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> 2/3 of the way done with this fic!! Ahh it's been a trip, and I hope you guys are still enjoying <3 Don't be afraid to tell me what you think; I'm always a whore for comments!! 
> 
> ;)

Leaving the law office of Annalise Keating feels like starting over. Emancipation. It might as well be a whole new world, and this is the dividing line, the crucial delineation, separating her life pre-Annalise and post-Annalise.

Michaela actually manages to establish a somewhat normal day-to-day routine, like a functioning member of society. She eats a healthy breakfast – cooking, sometimes, with fresh ingredients, and relying less on her stash of frozen Hot Pockets. She goes jogging. She gets coffee. She takes her multivitamins. She goes grocery shopping. She goes to work. She works, and it isn’t bad, and her bosses are sometimes even _nice_ to her. She comes back to her place – or Laurel’s, which she’s at so often that Laurel has jokingly brought up giving her her own dresser drawer and a key more than once. Then, she wakes up and does it all over again the next day.

She’d never thought monotony could be so… comforting. She’s had more than enough unpredictability for one lifetime; she’ll take as much boring as the world can throw at her, for now.

So. Everything is peachy keen again, as far as she’s concerned. Her five-year plan may have had to undergo some serious restructuring to allow for one Laurel Castillo, but she’s making adjustments accordingly, and though she’s leery of calling herself _happy_ just yet, she thinks she’s on her way.

The days are long and golden. A pleasant summer haze settles over the city.

Everything is peachy keen – except, perplexingly enough, for Laurel.

For the most part, she seems fine. But she’s more closed-off to her, suddenly. Even quieter than usual. Evasive. Not returning her texts. Cancelling plans last minute, sometimes. Distancing herself from her, almost, making herself all but emotionally inaccessible. Michaela has no clue why; she likes her new job well enough, seems happy to be with her, even if _this thing_ between them, whatever it is, still lacks a concrete label. She doesn’t know what it is – she’s never met anyone as hard to read as Laurel – but something’s amiss.

So, like any mystery, Michaela resolves to get to the bottom of it.

“Is everything okay with you?” she asks one night, as they lay naked together between Laurel’s zillion thread-count sheets, their limbs so tangled and twisted that they might as well be one body instead of two.

Laurel, who had been staring off into space, snaps back to reality and furrows her brow. “What do you mean?”

“I mean, you’ve been acting weird lately, is all.” Michaela props herself up on one elbow, turning towards her. “I just want to make sure you’re okay. And by _you_ I mean-”

“My mental state?” Laurel cracks a smile, moonlit and devastatingly beautiful. Her dark hair is tousled, spilling messily down her shoulders. “I’m not going crazy, if that’s what you’re wondering.”

Michaela frowns, determined to pry something out of her. “I wouldn’t blame you if you were, after everything. You… shot somebody. Annalise. And you never even talk about it.”

Laurel is silent, for a moment. She seems unsettled, and looks away, shifting awkwardly, like she wants nothing more than to _not_ have this conversation with her right now.

Michaela doesn’t blame her. She also isn’t about to let her off the hook.

Finally, she lets out a breath. “What’s there to talk about?”

Michaela blinks. “Um, let’s start with the fact you almost _killed_ someone. You don’t… that doesn’t bother you, at all?”

“Of course it bothers me.” Laurel pauses, then sits up suddenly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, looking flustered. “I’ll, uh, get us something to drink. Wine okay? I can’t pronounce the name, but I promise it’s old and red and ridiculously expensive.”

“Laurel – don’t,” Michaela says, firm enough to make Laurel freeze in the middle of tugging on her shorts and turn to look at her. “I want to talk to you. I want you to talk to me. I-” She cuts herself off, shaking her head and exhaling sharply. “You’re pushing me away, okay? Don’t think I don’t know that when I see it. Just talk to me. _Let me in_. Stop acting like you’re all… cold, a-and unfeeling – because I know you’re not.”

“Michaela…” Laurel sighs, and reaches down, tugging on her shirt. After she has, she stands still for one long moment, unmoving as a statue. “Please, can we not do this?”

“You never talk to me,” Michaela urges, and sits up, voice more pleading than angry. “I told you everything about me. You know me, but… I don’t know you. At all. I want to.” She pauses again, lowers her voice. “Please.”

There’s a storm of emotions raging behind Laurel’s eyes. She can see it, clear as day, as she stands there, rubbing her lips together, her hair still tucked into the collar of her blouse, all disheveled and so, so gorgeous that Michaela feels her chest tighten just looking at her. After a while, however, Laurel sucks in a breath and squares her shoulders, going for the door.

“I’ll go get that wine,” is all she says, and does just that before Michaela can stop her.

So she follows; of course she does. She throws on her blouse and squirms her way hurriedly into her slacks, following Laurel out the door, with twin spots of indignant color rising to her cheeks. Before she’d suspected something was up; ever since the night she asked Laurel to be honest with her there’s been a shift between them, a change in the air, and she’s only been shutting down more and more since then, shutting her out. And she doesn’t have a single damn clue _why_.

And she doesn’t want to lose her. Doesn’t want to lose this. She _won’t_. Not when she finally has something good in her life, something real, after so long.

“What’s going on with you?” she demands, all politeness and subtly chucked to the side. “Did I _do_ something to offend you?”

“No, I just-” Laurel sighs. “It doesn’t matter, okay? I’m fine. And… I don’t get why you’re on this, Michaela, it’s not a big deal-”

“It is a big deal! Is it _that_ hard to get you to talk about your feelings?”

Laurel uncorks the wine bottle, goes to pour herself a glass, then seems to rethink that decision and sets it down on the counter with a look of contemplation on her face. Still, she says nothing, and her silence infuriates Michaela more than any words ever could; Laurel has always been a woman of few words, and while at first that’d been intriguing, now it’s just unimaginably _frustrating._  

She clenches her jaw. “We’ve all killed people. Or helped kill someone. You pretend like it doesn’t bother you, but it has to. You… Y-you _shot_ Annalise for God’s sa-”

“I didn’t.”

Michaela freezes.

“What?”

Laurel won’t look at her; in fact, she seems to be looking everywhere possible _except_ in her eyes: the ceiling, the counter, her feet. She drums her fingers on the countertop, fidgeting nervously beneath her gaze. She looks, quite honestly, like she wants nothing more than to disappear into thin air.

“I didn’t. Shoot Annalise. I didn’t,” she finally blurts out, eyes still lowered and voice just as low. “Wes, he… He did it. And I lied. Said it was me.”

Michaela’s head is spinning. Laurel didn’t shoot Annalise. _Wes_ shot Annalise. Laurel lied – to her, to them all, let them believe she’d done it, let them blame her – and for _what_?

“Why?” she breathes. “Why would you-”

Laurel’s eyes catch the moonlight. Michaela thinks she can see them glistening with tears. “I just – I didn’t think. I knew if you guys knew it was him, you’d blame him, hate him, and… He wouldn’t have been able to handle that, Michaela, not after Sam…” She gulps, tries to steady her voice, and fails, and it’s even more strained when she speaks again. “So I lied. I did it to protect him. Like I always do. I… I didn’t have a choice.”

“And what if the police had found out?” she demands, suddenly furious at her, for being so stupid, so stupidly protective, sticking her neck out for him. “What if one of us had cracked, and said it was you, and… You’d gone down for it? E-ended up like Catherine and gone to jail for him? What were you thinking-?”

“I wasn’t,” Laurel fires back, angrily. “Thinking. I told you I wasn’t thinking. He’s just been through so much. So much… suffering, I couldn’t let him go through anymore, I…”

For a minute – or two, or three; Michaela doesn’t have much of a concept of time right here and now – they stand planted there as firm as roots, feet apart. Michaela doesn’t think she can breathe. She’s overcome by confusion and anger and so much affection right then that she can’t move a muscle, can’t make her brain fire off the commands to do so. She just stands there, dumbly, mouth slightly agape, and she wants to yell at her for being so reckless, and she wants to hold her, comfort her, kiss her, for caring so, so _much_. She cares so passionately, beyond all reason, beyond all sense, cares until it eats at her, cares until she’s stripped away everything she has, every last shred of her sanity, and given it away. It _is_ eating at her, worse than any disease or cancer ever could. Michaela sees it, right then.

She cares, and it’s killing her.

Michaela swallows the beginnings of a lump in her throat, and meets Laurel’s eyes. “So you lied, when I asked if you were honest with me. You lied to me.”

“There’re…” Laurel drifts off. “Yes. There’re things I didn’t tell you, okay? Things I… can’t, tell you.”

_Things._ Her stomach roils, at that. Sinks even further. “Like what?”

Laurel looks panicked, suddenly, like an animal boxed into a corner. Her breathing picks up. She raises her eyes to the ceiling, trying to keep her tears from falling, and releases another breath that trembles audibly on the way out.

“I can’t. Michaela, I can’t – please just… trust me when I say you don’t wanna know.”

Michaela raises her chin, determined, jaw set. “No. I do want to know.”

“Michaela-” Her voice breaks on her name. She’s not sure she’s ever seen Laurel in so much pain, so torn. “Listen to me, please. _Please_. You have to believe me… it’s better if you don’t-”

“You said you’d be honest with me. You promised me that to my face. So be honest with me. _Tell_ me.”

“Mich-”

“Tell me. Or I leave. I walk out now and I _do not_ come back.”

Laurel is crying, now. Full-on crying, which Michaela realizes she has never seen her do before. Her face crumples, her lip quivers, shoulders shaking, but her tears are just as silent as the rest of her. She swallows them down like they’re choking her, all hunched in on herself, weighed down by the burdens of her secrets. She looks so small to her, right then. Small as a child.

But the words that follow are not a child’s words. They’re damning. Word-destroying, like earthquakes and firestorms and catastrophes rolling off her tongue. Michaela wishes that was hyperbole.

It’s not. Not to her. Not when she hears them.

“Frank, he…” When she speaks her voice is soft as a whisper, thick with tears. Something that might be a sob interrupts her, the sound bubbling up from deep in her chest and rattling through her. “He killed Lila.”

_No_.

She goes tense. The words don’t process, for a moment. She hears them but she doesn’t _hear_ them, and she gapes dumbly because she doesn’t understand… Frank and Lila… Frank had killed Lila – no, no that isn’t right, that doesn’t add up, doesn't equate in any universe that makes sense. The world feels off-balance suddenly, the stars and planets and particles of dark matter floating in space millions of miles away all out of whack, and somehow everything is simultaneously still, too _still_. She sways a little on her feet.

That’s wrong. That’s wrong, wrong, that’s just-

“Th-that’s wrong,” Michaela sputters, shaking her head. Her brain locks up, goes into error mode, resetting itself on a loop, like it always does whenever she panics. “That’s… No he didn’t, _Sam_ killed Lila. What’re you…Why would…”

Laurel doesn’t say anything, at first, just looks at her through her tears, then breathes out a slow, measured breath through her mouth. “He told me. To my face. He killed her. He did.”

Her breathes are coming in pants. Something is wrapped around her chest, squeezing tight, fucking suffocating her. Frank – all along. Not Sam. _Not Sam_.

“But… why?”

It’s all she can think to ask. Laurel shakes her head, shrinking further, as if on a quest to make herself appear as tiny as she possibly can.

“I-I don’t know. He’d never… tell me, for sure, but…” She drifts off, for a moment, then raises her chin. “It was for Annalise. She found out about Sam and Lila, and-”

“Oh my God,” Michaela breathes, raising her hands to her face. “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God. We… w-we killed Sam, we thought it was… i-it was fine, he deserved it, he killed Lila, but-”

Laurel shakes her head, tears still falling in silence, trembling faintly in the dim light. “He didn’t. He was innocent.”

Michaela is crying too, now, or at least she thinks she is. She bars her teeth, starting off soft but raising her voice steadily. “You knew. Y-you knew, this whole time. You _lied_ to me, you… you-”

“I did it to protect you!” Laurel cries, and she takes a step towards her as if to reach out to her, but Michaela steps back, eyes cold. “I knew what it would do to you guys, if you knew, I knew how much it would… _fuck_ everyone up, okay? Because Sam was innocent a-and we killed him, and so I didn’t tell you, I didn’t tell anyone, I couldn’t-”

“Bull,” she spits. “That’s _bull_. You did it to protect Frank and you know it.”

Hurt flashes behind her eyes. She lowers her voice, and it shakes, thick with sorrow. “I didn’t. He’s a monster, Frank’s a… A-a monster, and he lied to me, told me he was a good guy, and I fell for it. I believed him. I’d never protect him, I want him to rot in jail, when I think about him I just feel so _sick_ , I…” A sob cuts her off. She sucks it back in quick, shaking her head. “Please. Please, Michaela, I was just trying to protect everyone, you know I was.”

Logically, Michaela knows she’s making sense, for the most part. Ignorance is bliss. Laurel had been trying to save their sanities while sacrificing her own, and she wants to reach out and hold her, just as much as she wants to walk out of this place and never see her face again – because she’s a liar, like all the rest of them, the others before. Like Aiden and Levi and Caleb.

She’s a liar, such a good liar. That shouldn’t upset her – they’re all liars, but had she really been so fucking _stupid_ to think Laurel wouldn’t lie to her, ever? Keep things from her? It’s the name of this damn game; they always lie to each other, always have and always will. Nothing is ever the truth. Laurel is no different, never has been, and this thing they have, whatever it is, can never be honest, not like she wants. Not like she needs.

And she feels stupid, like she had after Caleb, all over again. So blind and naïve and childish and _stupid_.

“Trying to protect us? By keeping this from us? This isn’t just some little _white lie_ -”

“How was I supposed to know what you’d do?” Laurel demands, defiant. “If you’d run to the cops and tell them everything – everything about what we did to Sam, or if they’d… pry it out of you, somehow? So, yes. I didn’t say anything. I thought it was the best thing to do. And I still… I think it was.”

For a while, Michaela just stares at her, all red cheeks and puffy eyes and a look of defeat about her. She wipes at her cheeks, sniffles, and Michaela thinks she’s beautiful even like this, even red-faced and teary-eyed, and she hates herself for noticing that; hates herself for caring about yet another person who’s just going to lie to her. Hurt her.

She meets her eyes, jaw clenched, voice steady. “You told me that night you wouldn’t lie to me. And you’ve been lying to me this entire _time_.”

Laurel opens her mouth to say something. She keeps going before she can, her voice faltering.

“I… I can’t do this. I can’t be with someone else who’s gonna lie to me, Laurel, I just…” She swallows. “I can’t, again.”

Laurel seems to panic, at that, and takes a step forward. “Michaela-”

“ _Don’t_. Don’t. Just stop-”

“ _Please_ ,” Laurel begs, and Michaela’s never seen her like this, never seen her eyes so wide with supplication, like she’s about to pitch herself down at her feet. She’d never imagined Laurel would ever beg anyone for anything, and she’s begging now, pleading. “Please, this is…” She pauses, meets her eyes, steps forward again and looks crestfallen when Michaela steps away. “This is the only good thing in my life. The only _real_ thing, I…”

Michaela wavers, then hardens again, and grabs her bag, going for the door, trying to stop up her tears and be firm and failing miserably on both accounts.

“You should’ve thought about that before you _lied_ to me. I need someone honest, and… I was stupid for thinking that’d be you – because all we ever do, all we’ve never _done_ , is lie to each other, all the damn time. But I’m done, with liars. Done _loving_ liars. Done… c-caring about them and letting them into my life and feeling like an idiot when they hurt me. Because they always do.” A pauses. She takes a breath, looks her square in the eyes. “I need someone who’s gonna love me like I wanna be loved. Like _I_ love me.”

_And that’s not you. Will never be you._

She turns, again, takes three steps towards the door, and is about to reach it when-

“Please,” Laurel croaks, from across the room, as broken as she thinks she’s ever heard another human being sound. “Please don’t go.”

She stops, God help her. She stops. Almost turns around, almost gives in, but then hardens her heart again, turns it to steel, like she’s gotten so good at doing. She almost apologizes, tells her she’s sorry, but she’s done apologizing, and _done_ saying she’s sorry. She can’t be here, with her. With a liar. She wants to stay but knows she needs to go, knows it in her bones, knows it’s right. And so she does.

She turns, and she goes.


	21. XXI

Laurel watches her leave.

She doesn’t call out again, doesn’t run after her, try to stop her. It’s not like it would do any good anyway, no matter how desperate she feels; Michaela has made up her mind, and when Michaela Pratt makes up her mind she’s a mountain of a girl that not even the gods could sway. Laurel knows this.

So she doesn’t try. She watches her leave. _Lets_ her leave. The door slams and she’s gone, as if she’d never been there, or in her life at all. Michaela had said she’d leave if she didn’t tell her everything, and she told her everything and she’d left her anyway, and the worst part is Laurel doesn’t even really blame her. She wonders, briefly, if this is how Frank had felt, after she’d asked him for honesty: opening up to her, giving her what, in his mind, was his ‘I love you,’ and having her walk out on him anyway. It’s a terrible fucking feeling; a powerless feeling. Like there’s nothing on earth she can do to make things right, bring her back to her, tell her that, yes, she lied, but _no_ , she will never do it again, about anything ever in her entire life, and she pinky swears, crosses her heart and hopes to die, and _means that,_ as sure as she’s breathing.

Michaela wouldn’t believe her, anyway. She’s a liar. Liars lie. She does not want to be with a liar, does not think a liar can love her, and maybe she’s right. And maybe Laurel _doesn’t_ love her now, not when they’ve only just begun, when this thing is still so new, but she knows she could, one day.

She could love her. And she may have just lost her, and watched that chance walk right out the door.

She stands there, for a while. The stillness of her apartment suddenly makes her uneasy. She watches the door, hoping, irrationally, that she’ll walk back through, change her mind, but after a few minutes of this it’s clear to Laurel she won’t. She’d screwed up; screwed them up, just like she’d been afraid she would. Michaela had tried to get close so she’d tried to distance herself accordingly, not to hurt her but to protect her from the truth, do what was best.

And she’d fucked herself over anyway. And she screwed up so, so _bad_.

After she finishes crying, she guzzles down a few glasses of wine, knowing it’s a waste to drink something so outrageously expensive solely for its alcohol content without tasting it, but not giving a shit. She sits for a while, in contemplation. Stews. She doesn’t get drunk, but she gets more than slightly tipsy, and that’s enough to take the edge off the horrible, sinking weight she feels inside her, so heavy it feels like her entire chest cavity is about to cave in and suffocate her.

She stews. Then, she grabs the bottle of wine, corks it, finds her keys and purse, and strides out the door to her car, suddenly determined.

She doesn’t know where she’s headed, not really; all she knows is that she can’t be alone tonight, and before she knows it she’s pulling up in front of Wes’s ramshackle apartment building on the other side of town and putting her car into park. It seems like it’s been ages since she’s seen him, talked to him – really _talked_ – and she misses him, and God, right now, more than anything, she just really needs a _friend_. So she stumbles up the stairs, slightly tipsy as she is, knocking on his door and waiting for him to answer. He does, after a moment, but doesn’t open the door all the way, just looks at her, eyes narrowed, apparently surprised to see her there – which only makes her feel shittier, because she’s been a shitty friend to him too, lately.

Shitty to everybody. That seems to be her new MO.  

“Hey,” she greets, forcing a smile and hoping her makeup isn’t runny enough to make it obvious she’s been crying, though her eyes are probably still sufficiently puffy to tell the tale. She holds up the bottle of wine, cocking her head to one side. “Drink with me? I, uh, need someone to commiserate with.”

The surprise gives way to concern, and Wes frowns. “Are you okay?”

“No,” she answers, point-blank, and sighs. “I’m pretty terrible, actually. Now, are you gonna let me in or am I gonna have to drink this with that homeless guy out on the curb?”

Wes seems reluctant, still. She has no idea why, but finally, after a moment, he caves, yanks open the door all the way, and steps aside, beckoning her to enter – and the instant Laurel does, and takes in the interior of his apartment, she understands.

He’s constructed a crazy wall.

Pictures. Newspaper clippings. A map, with lines drawn on it. Little yellow post-it notes stuck to various parts of it. She doesn’t have to look close to know it’s about his father; he’s been obsessed, coming up with theory after theory and decoding nonexistent puzzles. Wes approaches her from behind a bit timidly, as if expecting her to scold him, or storm over and start ripping things down for his own good, but she does neither of those things.

“I, uh… I can explain-” he starts, but she shakes her head, sighs again.

“You need to stop, y’know. It’s not good for you. _But_ ,” she pauses, ambling over to his bed, “I’m not here to mother hen you. I’m here to get as drunk as this bottle of wine can get me.”

With that, Laurel plops down on his creaky old bed, uncorks the wine bottle with a low _pop_ , and takes a deep swig out of it. Wes hangs back near the door for a moment, looking as if he’s not quite sure how to handle this situation, before finally letting his shoulders droop and doing the same. The mattress sags under the weight of the two of them, and she passes him the bottle without a word, staring off into space, eyes unfocused and bleary.

Wes clears his throat. “You… wanna talk about it?”

Laurel hesitates, then lowers her eyes and sloshes the wine around in the bottle. “I screwed up. I really, _really_ screwed up.”

“Mind telling me how?”

She’s silent, for a moment, before realizing there’s no point in hiding anything from Wes – when hiding things from people only seems to be continually screwing her over, lately.

“Okay, so, ready for this?” Laurel sucks in a breath. “I was dating Michaela. Yes, _Michaela_ Michaela. Or – not dating, but… having sex with. But also not _not_ dating.”

Wes raises his eyebrows, blindsided by that. “Wait – what? For how long?”

“Past month. Maybe not even.” She pauses, tips the bottle back again. “And I did something. I wasn’t… honest with her, and I think we broke up, if you can break up with someone you’re not dating. I screwed up. And I _knew_ I was gonna screw up, and I did it anyway, and I’m so… so stupid.”

Wes doesn’t say anything for a while, processing this mountain of new information and struggling to make sense of it. She can see the gears behind his eyes turning, before they slot into place and he glances back over at her.

“What was your guys’ fight about?”

Laurel flattens her lips into a line. “I can’t tell you.”

“Then… what weren’t you honest with her about?”

Another pause. Another, greedier swig. “I can’t tell you that either.”

“Y’know,” Wes tells her, “I think I kind of understand why she’s angry.”

Laurel groans. “You’re right. I’m the worst.”

“You care about her, though, right?”

She stops to think. Yes, she does. _God yes_ , she does. She cares about Michaela almost more than she knows what to do with, and hurting her had been like turning a knife in her own stomach; gutting herself. Even now, remembering the tears in her eyes makes her want to curl up and wither away and die.

“Yeah,” she murmurs, finally. “Yeah. I do.”

“So make it right,” is all the advice he offers, and she scoffs.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Why not? You care about her. And you know you messed up. So make it right. Be honest with her. I mean, we’ve all killed people. Or… helped kill people. It’s not like anything you did could be much worse than that.”

She considers that, turning the idea over and over in her hands, before nodding. “No. You’re right. I will.” _I don’t know how. Don’t have the slightest damn clue how. But I will._

They sit in silence, for a minute or so, listening to the faint blaring of police sirens outside his window on the street below and passing the bottle back and forth. Finally, she turns her head to look at Wes, and gives him a little grin, just a tiny upward quirking of her lips.

“You’re being really cool about all this, you know. Us.”

He shrugs. “Love’s love, right? And you’re my friend. ‘Course I would be.”

Laurel chuckles, and leans her head against his shoulder, releasing a breath. “God, dating girls just… fucks me up every single time. I don’t know why I do it.”

“Me either.”

She sniffles, managing a watery laugh, before sobering up and asking, “Are you okay? Really?”

“Are any of us ever _really_ okay?” he quips, trying to make a half-hearted joke, but Laurel knows deflection when she sees it.

“I’m serious, Wes.”

Wes pauses, long enough for another drink. “No. I’m not. I feel like I’m going nuts. And I feel… powerless. I’m never gonna know the truth about my dad, my mom, what happened…” He sighs. “I don’t know what to do. I-I don’t know how to be normal, anymore.”

Laurel lets the weight of his words press down on them, for a moment, before she looks up and sets her chin on his shoulder, frowning.

“I’m always here,” she says, softly. “I know I’ve been a terrible friend lately. But I’m here, and I love you. Team Quiet and Dangerous, right?”

Wes smiles, at that, and it’s a genuine smile. She holds out her fist, and he bumps it with his, echoing, “Yeah. Team Quiet and Dangerous.”

“Mmm. We should make one of those pacts, though,” she proposes. “Like, if we’re both not married by forty we just marry each other.”

“Fine by me. I think Michaela might be jealous if she finds out, though.”

Laurel chuckles. “Yeah. That’s probably true.”

A beat. Then-

“Really, though?” he asks, furrowing his brow. “You’re dating Michaela? Like, _Michaela_ Michaela?”

She nudges him playfully. “Yeah, why?”

“Nothing.” He shrugs. “She just seems…”

“High-maintenance?” she finishes for him, slurring her words. “And high-strung. And… _highly_ beautiful.”

 _And I’m in deep. Way, way,_ way _over my head._

~

 

 

She resolves to fix things. It sounds easy enough, in theory.

In theory. Until Laurel remembers how terrible she is with words, and even more so with apologies.

She gives her space for about a week, room to cool down; she knows Michaela well enough to know she needs that, before she’ll even consider hearing her out. She texts her when the seven-day communication embargo is up, asking her to meet on her lunch break at her favorite mom-and-pop bakery in town, with bagels Michaela has professed more than once to be the best in the world.

No answer. Unsurprising.

So, she goes old-fashioned and calls.

Also no answer.

That necessitates a change in tactics, so Laurel shows up at her office building downtown the next afternoon, around the time she knows Michaela always takes her lunches, brown paper bag clasped in her hand with fresh, overpriced, gourmet artisan bagels inside, and waits on the sidewalk in front of the building for her to emerge. She gets a few strange looks from passersby but ignores them, and after fifteen minutes, the glass office doors open, and out steps Michaela, just like she’d planned.

She’s a vision; a sight to behold, in a sleeveless blue eyelet dress and white heels, skin sticky with sweat in the heat of summer and hair swept back into a ponytail, her purse slung over one arm. She looks almost like a mirage, a beautiful hallucination as the waves of heat rise up from the sidewalk beneath her, an oasis in the desert and all that. It distracts Laurel more than a little to see her, makes her throat and her lock up in tandem like little malfunctioning machines, but she manages to make herself play it cool and approaches her as nonthreateningly as she can, eyes bright, hopeful.

The instant Michaela notices her, however, her expressions sours. Her eyes darken visibly, dark as rain clouds, as Laurel comes to a stop before her, trying her best to remain chipper and optimistic when really she can sense the oncoming storm approaching.

“Hey,” she greets, making herself smile. “I, uh, got us some bagels. Fresh from Julianne’s. Join me for lunch?”

Michaela gives her one long _Look_. Then, she takes a step forward, and predictably enough, brushes past her without a word.

Laurel sighs, and goes after her immediately. “Michaela-”

“I’m not talking to you,” is the only response she gets, clipped and terse, and Laurel frowns, quickening her pace to keep up with her; Michaela can walk surprisingly fast in heels, as it turns out.

“Michaela, please,” she urges, exhaling sharply. “You can’t keep shutting me out forever.”

Michaela rolls her eyes, and doesn’t stop. “Watch me.”

“Don’t just-” She cuts herself off, frowning. “Don’t let this… ruin us, there must be something I can-”

Finally, the other girl rounds on her. “Don’t let this ruin us? _I’m_ not the one who lied; the-the one who swore to my face you’d be honest with me, and then _kept_ lying.” She pauses, sorrow flickering behind her eyes. Michaela softens her voice, shaking her head, her shoulders drooping. “I’m not the one that ruined us, Laurel. Don’t you dare act like it’s my fault.”

Laurel sags in defeat, and they stand there for a tense moment in silence, before she meets her eyes and purses her lips.

“I’m sorry,” she murmurs. “I know that doesn’t mean anything to you. I should’ve been honest, I just… I really thought I was doing the right thing, trying to protect everyone. And I can be honest. I want to be. I _will_ be, I just… don’t want this to be the end.” She lowers her eyes, sucks in a breath, then holds out the bag of bagels to her. “Here. I got these for you. I know they’re your favorite.”

Slowly, very slowly, Michaela reaches out and takes the bag. She seems conflicted, a bit deflated and no longer ready to chew her out, but she doesn’t speak, just looks at her for a long moment. Not having anything else to say, Laurel is the one to break away, giving her one last weak little smile, before stepping past her and making her way down the street, back to her office.

She resists the urge to look back. It’s hard as hell, and just about kills her on the inside. But she manages not to.

 

~

 

That evening, after work, there’s a knock on her door.

She’d spent pretty much all day moping after her encounter with Michaela, and contemplating adopting a cat for companionship, if she’s liable to continue on this streak of awful dating luck – but the sound makes her perk up and press pause on her pity party. She hurries over, and pulls it open, and lo and behold, in front of her stands Michaela Pratt herself, still dressed in her clothes from work, holding the bag of bagels in her hands, rubbing her lips together and looking a bit like she’s starting to think maybe she shouldn’t have come.

“Hey,” she greets, a bit breathless and more than a bit flustered.

Michaela doesn’t say anything. Instead, she just lets out a breath and steps inside uninvited, but Laurel doesn’t complain; instead, she just closes the door behind her and watches as Michaela sets the bag down on her counter, along with her purse, then turns to look at her, almost shyly.

“I came to give you those back,” she announces, though her voice lacks the fire it has when she’s about to yell at someone, and based on that Laurel thinks she can let herself relax. Michaela folds her arms and fidgets a little, looking awkward and almost like she’s trying to seem mad, but isn’t really. “I don’t want your apology bagels.”

“Oh.” Laurel places her hands on her hips. “Well, normally I do apology roses. I just thought you might like bagels better. More… subtle.”

Michaela almost smiles – _almost_ , before she beats the expression into submission and forces her lips down in the opposite direction instead. “Stop it.”

“Stop what?”

“Stop… doing things that make it hard for me to stay mad at you.”

“Don’t be mad at me.” Laurel lets her smile collapse too, and tentatively approaches her, voice dripping with sincerity. “Please. I hate this. And I miss you.”

Michaela raises her chin. “You didn’t tell me. You didn’t… you just… _kept_ those things from me, when I asked you to be honest, and-”

“I’ll never do it again,” Laurel promises. “Never. I will never lie to you again, Michaela, about anything, and if I do… You have permission to leave, and walk out, and never talk to me again, and I’ll accept that. I promise. I’m…” She chokes up, about of nowhere, and pauses to steady herself. “I’m sorry, okay? I’m so sorry.”

A wave of softness washes over Michaela, right then. The hardness in her eyes and her features vanish, and she melts, moving in close, pressing her forehead up against hers. She reaches up and caresses her cheek, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and Laurel swears it’s the most tender thing she’s ever felt before in her life; the most pure. The easiest.

Being with Kan, Frank… It had always felt like work. It’d never been easy.

Never like this. Never like _her._

“You knew, this whole time,” Michaela murmurs. “About Lila. And… you didn’t tell anyone. _How_?”

Laurel sniffles, and tries not to cry, but Michaela touches her, draws her closer, and when she does she wants to weep like a child all over again. “I knew I couldn’t. I knew what it would do to you guys. I hated it, it… was like suffocating. I felt like I was fucking suffocating.”

“Laurel…” She drifts off, shaking her head and wrapping her arms around her, drawing her close. Laurel nestles her face in her hair, inhaling the gentle, earthy scent of her perfume, and shuts her eyes, and for a moment she’s lost, washed in her breathing and her smell and God, really her _everything_. “God, I’m sorry…”

They break apart after a moment, but still hover close, foreheads pressed together, one of Michaela’s arms still wrapped around her back. Laurel blinks back her tears, and Michaela’s face comes into focus, and she wonders suddenly how she got so lucky, how something so good came out of so much bad. It doesn’t feel real. She almost wants to pinch herself, to make sure she isn’t dreaming.

But she isn’t. Michaela leans forward, ghosts her lips across hers and kisses her sweetly, then moves up to peck the tip of her nose, and she knows, again, that she isn’t.

“I still have nightmares about it,” she confesses, voice hardly more than a whisper. “That I’m her. Lila. And that I’m up on that roof… and he’s strangling me.” She stops, sniffing, and Michaela doesn’t interrupt, just waits, just listens. “I wish I’d never met him. I _hate_ him, he… He ruined me.”

“He did not ruin you,” Michaela shoots back, suddenly firm. “Hey. If Caleb didn’t ruin me, Laurel, Frank did _not_ ruin you.” A pause. A tiny smile. “No one could ever ruin you.”

Laurel believes it, then. She is not ruined. She may be a bad person, but she’s not ruined, not depraved beyond the point of redemption. She’s still standing. No one and _nothing_ could ever ruin her, not as long as she has her by her side.

Nothing. Nothing in the world.

So Laurel manages a watery laugh, and reaches up to wipe away her tears. “God, we both have… shitty taste in guys, huh?”

“Maybe it’s like you said.” Michaela shrugs, and a full-toothed smile blooms like a flower on her lips. “Maybe it is a sign.”

And Laurel doesn’t believe in God. She doesn’t particularly believe in destiny, or the predestination of fate, or any holy book or doctrine – but she believes in the girl standing before her now, drawing her close again, nuzzling her neck. She believes there is still good in the world, even after everything, even with all the blood on their hands. She believes this thing they have, whatever it is, is right, and honest, and real.

She doesn’t believe in a lot. But she believes in her, believes in this, and that’s all she needs. All she'll ever need. 


	22. XXII

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is late I apologize! Real life and other fics took my attention away and I forgot. Next update will (hopefully) be on time.
> 
> Thanks for reading as always <33 I love yall.

It’s mid-June when they make it more or less official.

A group of the other interns at Sterling invite her out for drinks after work one night at an upscale bar in Old City, and so she texts Laurel as she’s getting ready to leave, telling her not to wait up and that she might be home late.

Apparently having a bit of a slow day at the office, Laurel responds within a minute.

- _You’re not cheating on me are you?_

Michaela scoffs. She’s not sure it’s possible to cheat if you aren’t technically dating someone, but doesn’t particularly want to go down that avenue of thought right now.

- _Ha ha. The other interns invited me out for drinks_

- _I thought you said they were a bunch of annoying straight white boys. And didn’t you call them ‘opportunistic piranhas’?_

She snorts. Yes, those had been her exact words; Sterling doesn’t have much of an interest in diversity, as it turns out. To be fair, though, she’s probably just as much of an opportunistic piranha as the rest of them, but.

Still.

- _They are. There is one other girl though. But I’ve said no too many times already_

- _So say no again. Easy_

- _It’s called building a network. I have to play nice_

- _Which bar? I’ll come. Maybe make it suck less_

- _Below Zero Lounge_

She pauses, then adds:

- _You don’t have to come you’ll hate them even more than I do. It’s like working with three Asher Millstone clones_

- _I just threw up a little in my mouth_

Michaela smirks.

- _My sentiments exactly_

_-Well never fear I’ll be your knight in shining armor!! Leaving now babe_

She narrows her eyes, at that.

- _Don’t call me babe_

A moment passes. Then-

- _Sure princesa_

Michaela flushes a little, and grins like a fool down at her screen, glancing around furtively to make sure no one is watching before typing her response.

- _That’s better_

 

~

 

Happy hour with the other interns is pretty much just as terrible as she’d anticipated. And most definitely not _happy_.

The three guys are as boorish and immature as Asher – if not more, and won’t stop hitting on the bartender no matter how many times the poor woman has to politely fake-laugh and pretend she has someone else to serve to get away. Michaela’s having trouble telling them apart, honestly; they look all but identical. At least two of them are named John. Or Jake. Something equally generic with a J.

Yes, she is aware that one day she’ll have to actually learn their names, if she’s committed to this whole ‘networking’ thing. Tonight, though, she’s just going to keep nursing her martini, and enduring, and biting her tongue at every offensive comment they spew. She’s always been good at that: enduring.

Particularly when it comes to dumbass white boys.

There’s only one other girl; a petite, mousy, not terribly chatty redhead with freckles named Hannah, who looks similarly miserable, and who Michaela is pretty sure only got this job because her rich daddy knew someone who knew someone in the firm. Laurel still isn’t anywhere to be seen – she can’t say she really blames her for choosing not to show – and Michaela is just about to start planning her escape to get back home to her when suddenly she hears the light thumping of footsteps, and sees a body slide onto the barstool to her right. A familiar voice meets her ears.

“Hey,” Laurel greets, setting her purse down. She’s dressed in her clothes from work: a sleeveless pale pink blouse tucked into a pair of white slacks, cheeks flushed red from the heat and hair windblown. “Having fun?”

Michaela could almost sob with relief at the sight of her, but makes a face for effect. “You have no idea.”

“Well, well, well,” one of the guys calls out from his seat at the corner of the bar, having noticed the new arrival. “Who’s that you got there, Pratt?”

Michaela grimaces, then swiftly breaks out one of her quickly-accessible, rehearsed smiles from her arsenal. “Everyone, this is Laurel. We worked together for Annalise Keating.”

She avoids a definite label – not _my friend_ , or _my girlfriend_ , or _my_ _former co-worker_. No one else seems to notice, but the omission is obvious to Michaela, painfully so, and she’s sure Laurel picks up on it as well – and she’s surprised, suddenly, by how much it bothers her. By how _trapped_ it makes her feel.  

One of the other guys, also closer to the other end of the bar, leans over to see them and makes a low whistle. “Yeesh. Heard Keating’s a real ballbuster. How’d you two make it out alive?”

Michaela opens her mouth, but Laurel jumps in with a wry grin. “Oh, believe me, we had to bury more than our fair share of bodies along the way.”

Michaela almost chokes on her drink. James-John-whatever-his-name-is has no clue that she isn’t joking, and smirks.

“Ey, Micky P, I like your friend. You should bring her out with us more often.”

“ _Micky P_?” Laurel leans towards her and lowers her voice, as she motions for the bartender.

Michaela scoffs. “Trust me, I had _no_ part in selecting that nickname.”

Laurel gives her a sympathetic look, then turns her attention to the guys, answering their droll questions about what she does and how she likes it at the PD’s office, and – Michaela can tell – trying not to nod off in the process. All the while, she sits in the middle of them in silence, feeling awkward and strange and suddenly all bottled-up, like if she doesn’t say something about her and Laurel soon she’s going to scream, or combust, or maybe a combination of the two – because the guys are leering at Laurel like they’re leering at every other girl, and that is one hundred percent _not cool_ in Michaela’s book.

She chokes the words down. Knows she shouldn’t. Possessiveness isn’t a good look and jealousy isn’t either. But suddenly, just when one of the guys leans in just a tad too close to Laurel, they’re coming up and out her mouth almost of their own accord, without her permission, and before she can think twice-

“We’re dating,” she blurts out, meeting James or John’s or whoever-the-hell-it-is’s eyes. The words are pointed, barbed and sharp, enough to almost make the boy flinch.

And… there. She’s said it. Admitted it out loud, for the first time in her life – not stayed silent, not held back, but admitted it. The trio of guys and Hannah stare at her in surprise, and when she glances over at Laurel, her eyes are just as wide, brow furrowed as if to say, _Are you really sure you wanna do that_?

Briefly, she wonders what the hell she’s just done, if she’s made some terrible, awful, catastrophic mistake.

Quickly, she decides that she really fucking does not care.

Finally, one of them pipes up, bewildered. “Wait, so… You two are… lesbians?”

“Bisexual,” Michaela answers, shocked by how smoothly and easily the word rolls off her tongue, not feeling foreign or strange in the slightest, and she thinks it’s being with Laurel, maybe, that has made it start to feel so familiar, so comfortable. “She’s my girlfriend. I just thought you all should know.” _To establish boundaries_ , is what she doesn’t say, but it’s what she means, and she’s sure they’re not too stupid to grasp that bit of subtext.

The same guy, whose voice sounds vaguely like one that should belong to a high school skater dude instead of a law student, looks impressed. “Damn. That’s… kinda hot.”

Michaela shoots him a withering glare, and the guy next to him hits him on the arm.

“Bro, gross. That’s seriously not cool.” He then turns his attention to her, nodding and pounding his chest with his fist. “Mad respect, Micky P. A round for the ladies on me!”

They get their drinks, and Michaela immediately busies herself with sipping hers, her eyes watering, cheeks aflame, heart pounding, whole body in a state of shock and panic, yet somehow, some way, she’s never felt so… relieved. So _free_. She’d expected all sorts of gross comments, various forms of ostracizing and weird looks – and yeah, there had been that one comment, but as a whole, the trio don’t even bat an eye, and Silent Hannah isn’t looking at her with visible disgust as far as she can tell.

She’d thought all her life liking girls had made her less of a person, something sub-human. And Michaela realizes right then, like a bolt of lightning straight to her heart, that it doesn’t. That it _doesn’t_ matter. Not at all – not to her, at least. It should never have mattered in the first place, and she’s weighed down by the gravitational forces of the earth but she feels like she’s soaring all at once, launched out of the atmosphere and heading for the moon. _Free._

Finally.

After a few hours – and more than a few rounds – she and Laurel part ways with the group and make their way out into the street. She’d paced herself and isn’t drunk, not even really tipsy, but Laurel is another story entirely, drinking too much like she often tends to do and stumbling all over the sidewalk, having to hold onto Michaela like a crutch to steady herself. Laurel always gets a bit handsy when she’s drunk too, and she tries to maneuver her way into her lap more than once in the back seat during the cab ride to Michaela’s place. It takes a while before she manages to extricate herself from Laurel’s vicelike embrace, pay the amused driver with a generous tip, and pull the other girl out of the car, escorting her up to her apartment.

“’ _Chaelaaaaaaa_ ,” she sing-songs, fidgeting behind her impatiently as Michaela unlocks her door. She wraps her arms around her waist, humming. “C’mon, I want you. Let’s… let’s do it out here, right now-”

“Cut it out,” Michaela tries to be firm, even though Laurel is adorably bumbling when she’s hammered, all loopy grins and groping hands and hazy eyes, and it’s impossible to actually be frustrated with her. “Seriously, Laurel, stop, my neighbors are gonna hear you.”

Finally, she pushes open the door and tugs Laurel in with her, flicking on the lights in the living room. Immediately, as she’d expected she would, Laurel pounces like a feline, giggling and chewing on her bottom lip.

“Mmm, you’re so hot,” she slurs, and succeeds in planting one very wet, very sloppy kiss just to the right of her intended target: her lips. “C’mere, take off your clothes… let me make you come, lemme give you a _billion_ orgasms. To make up for… y’know. I wanna…”

She drifts off, seems to forget where she was going with that, and hiccups. Michaela laughs softly, and leads her into the bedroom.

“I’m not having sex with you. You don’t even know your own name right now.”

“Do so!” Laurel protests, as Michaela plonks her down on the bed. She sags in defeat, whining. “Michaelaaaaa, _please_ …”

“It’s not up for debate,” Michaela reminds her gently, moving up behind her briefly on the bed to unclasp her necklace. “Sober up, and we’ll talk tomorrow.”

Laurel groans dramatically, throwing her head back. “You are _no fun_. You’re… less fun than those guys. Jimmy, or… Jimothy, Jim, something, God, what was his name again?”

Michaela snorts, and sets the necklace on her nightstand, then kneels to take off Laurel’s shoes. “Your guess is as good as mine.”

She undoes those too and tosses them aside, but just as she’s starting to rise to her feet, Laurel reaches out and catches her by the arm, stilling her before she can.

“You’re so pretty,” she observes, blearily. “You’re so… beautiful. Like a queen. Have I ever told you that before?”

Michaela’s heart melts a bit, at that. She stays stooped down where she is, so that she’s closer to eye-level with Laurel, and grins.

“You’re drunk.”

“I _know_ I am, silly, but you’re still beautiful. And guess what? You called me your _girlfriend_!”

Michaela chuckles, lowly. That still feels surreal to her, a little, like it was a dream. “Uh, yeah. I guess I did.”

Laurel grows abruptly serious, almost pouting. “You never asked me, though. If I… if _I_ wanted to be your girlfriend.”

She blinks, amused. “Okay. Do you want to-”

Laurel shakes her head, making a faint _uh uh uh_ sound and motioning for her to come close, like a little kid. “C’mere. I have a secret to tell you.”

Michaela almost laughs, but ultimately humors her, leaning in close so that Laurel can whisper in her ear with her hands cupped on either side of her mouth.

“I wanna be your girlfriend too,” she confesses once she’s close enough, a bit conspiratorially, and when Michaela moves away Laurel gives her such a huge, cheesy grin that she can’t help but smile back.

“Good, then. I’m glad we’re agreed. Now lay down and sleep this off.”

She gets to her feet, and Laurel makes a sound of disappointment. “ _Fine_. As long as you promise that we’re still gonna be girlfriends in the morning. For… forever.”

Michaela laughs again, but turns in the doorway and looks back at her. “I promise we’ll still be girlfriends in the morning. _And_ for forever.”

She’s pretty sure Laurel is going to say something else, but that seems to satisfy her for tonight, and so she falls back onto the bed and curls up on her side, still fully clothed, closing her eyes and murmuring a garbled ‘goodnight’ under her breath.

Michaela comes over and tucks her in later, after she’s out. And she may or may not bend down and press a tender kiss to her forehead, too – but she isn’t _that_ cheesy, or sappy, or lovey-dovey.

Nope. No way. She isn’t that cheesy.

She’s starting to think she might be a little in love, though.

 

~

 

In the morning Laurel wakes up, and Laurel is, unsurprisingly, very hungover.

Michaela is in the kitchen cooking omelets for breakfast when she hears the always-pleasant sound of Laurel puking her guts out, and not long after the other girl emerges from the bedroom in a t-shirt and shorts, her hair a rat’s nest and her eyes all squinty, wincing at the bright sunlight. By all logic and reason she looks like she should be about fifty shades of miserable, but a big, dumb grin explodes onto her face when she lays eyes on her, making her way over to the stove. She comes to a stop behind Michaela, curling her arms around her and humming contently into her ear.

“Good morning,” Michaela greets, smiling back. “Feel like shit?”

“Uh uh.” Laurel shakes her head, burying her face in her neck and rocking them gently side to side. “You’re here, aren’t you?”

Michaela hesitates to ask about last night, at first. Almost certainly Laurel won’t remember a second of it – the girlfriend thing, any of it – and the last thing she wants now is to freak her out with commitment, sending her running. But her curiosity wins out before she can hold back, and she stops what she’s doing for a second, going still and turning her head back to look at her.

“You, uh… You remember any of last night?” she asks, trying to play the question off casually.

“Oh, you mean you calling me your girlfriend in front of everyone?” Laurel squeezes her tighter, nodding. “Mmm hmm. I remember that. And, just so you know, I _do_ still wanna be your girlfriend too.”

Michaela turns, and smiles again; smiles so big it feels like it’ll break her face in two. Because Laurel is almost glowing in the sunshine, looking ethereal, looking like a beautiful, perfect dream, and if this _is_ a dream she fully intends to sleep here forever with her, never wake up, stay in this secluded little world they’ve built for themselves. She’d thought she was happy, so many times before in her life. Convinced herself she was, that she had everything she wanted: the boy and the ring and the grades and the future.

She’d thought she was happy, before. Now, here with Laurel, she _knows_ she is. 

“Yeah?” Michaela says. “For forever?”

“For forever,” Laurel echoes, and leans in, and kisses her again. Kisses her silent.


	23. XXIII

If you had told Laurel Castillo at the beginning of the school year that by summer she’d be calling none other than obnoxious, high-strung, takes-her-multivitamins-everyday, talks-too-much gunner Michaela Pratt her girlfriend, she would’ve said you were insane, and probably also laughed in your face.

But she never gets tired of it, of hearing the word aloud. _Girlfriend_. When her stepmom calls to do her customary biannual relationship status checkup, she announces proudly that yes, actually, she has a _girlfriend_ named Michaela, and has to resist the urge to jump up and down in triumph at the nearly one-minute shocked silence that follows on the other line. She goes to the store to buy Michaela flowers for her birthday, and gushes to the florist that they’re for her girlfriend – not really because she needs him to know but because she loves saying it so much she can barely contain herself.

She feels like a teenager with her first love all over again, giddy as a schoolgirl. She’d forgotten what it feels like, to be all floaty and giggly and happy, like she’d rather skip and dance and frolic around than walk like a normal person; like she might as well be in a musical, always on the brink of bursting into song and doing a dance routine with a group of chipper animated woodland creatures.

She’s happy. And so immeasurably lucky, to finally have something good, and real, and honest.

They tell the rest of the group at a K5 reunion at Oliver’s apartment one night – which really only involves telling Asher, because Wes and Connor and Oliver already know and have for a while. They don’t announce it outright; instead, Laurel just settles herself down onto Michaela’s lap on the couch like it isn’t anything out of the ordinary as they chatter away with the group, and waits until Asher’s confusion finally reaches its peak and he furrows his brow, looking at her, then at Michaela, then back to her.  

“You, uh…” He drifts off, looking as if he isn’t sure how to phrase what he wants to say. “Is there… something going on with you two? Like, did I miss something?”

“Oh, yeah,” Laurel says, almost with disinterest, like it’s an afterthought. “We’re dating.”

Asher’s jaw drops what must be record distance. His eyes bulge out of skull unnaturally, and next to her, Laurel can tell Michaela is trying to bite back a smile. So are Wes and Connor and Oliver, from what she can see.

“Wait – what?” he sputters. “You… you two’re… you and _Pratt_ are… _What_?”

“Oh darn,” Michaela quips, glancing sideways at Laurel. “Looks like we forgot to mail him an invitation to our formal coming out ceremony.”

Laurel feigns disappointment. “Aw, yeah. And we had the rainbow stationery and everything.” She shakes her head and makes a half-assed apologetic face, sipping at her beer. “Dang it. Really dropped the ball on that one.”

Asher just looks even more bewildered. “ _Wait_. Wait, was this a real thing? And _I_ wasn’t invited? Bro!”

“Uh, duh,” Connor chimes in, picking up the charade and rolling with it effortlessly. “I don’t know if you know, but every gay person has to have a coming out party with _at least_ fifty people in attendance or else you’re not allowed to be a certified member of the club. Right, Ollie?”

Oliver almost snickers, then catches himself. “Yeah. Yup. I had mine when I was sixteen. It was Elton John-themed. We, uh, call it the gay mitzvah, actually. Like a bar mitzvah, but… Y’know. Really gay.”

Laurel snorts, and in doing so inadvertently inhales beer up into her sinus cavity. It burns, and nearly comes out her nose, and before she can help it she’s laughing helplessly, trying to cover her mouth with one hand but failing. Connor and Michaela follow suit, and Wes, in his seat on the armchair next to the couch, chuckles too, not doing much to hide it.

Slow to pick up social cues as he is, Asher seems to realize something is amiss right then and narrows his eyes. “Okay, you guys are obviously fucking with me, and just so you know that’s _totally_ not cool.”

“Sorry. Sorry,” Laurel chortles, making herself sober up. “Fine. Long story short? Yes, me and Michaela are dating. And no, gay mitzvahs are _not_ a thing.”

“Which is a disgrace,” Connor remarks. “Because they should be.”

“Agreed,” Wes pipes up with a shrug. “They sound like they’d be a blast.”

“Wait, dude, are you… Are you gay too?” Asher blinks several times, taking a look around at the group like a lamb who’s only just realized he’s in a den of lions. “Woah, am I the _only_ straight person here?”

“Well, it _is_ the gay agenda after all,” Connor wriggles his eyebrows. “Pick you off one by one, isolate you, and convert you to our side. Divide and con-queer, am I right?”

The other make enthusiastic sounds of agreement. Asher just stares for a moment, before shaking his head, setting down his beer, and heading for the bathroom.

“Man, it’s _so_ weird being a minority!” he remarks, on his way down the hall.

They snicker after him. Wes takes a sip of his beer, and sits up, addressing the group. “I’m not, for the record. But he is really fun to mess with.”

“Mmm,” Laurel hums in agreement, plopping down next to Michaela on the couch and extending her arm across the back behind her, then glancing over at Connor and Oliver. “Seriously though. I’m glad you two are back together; it felt like the planets were out of line or something.”

“ _I’m_ glad too. Believe me,” Connor says. “And, I’m glad I stayed here, because, I mean, what was I gonna do without you crazies for four whole months? Actually be _normal_ for once?”

Laurel rests her head on Michaela’s shoulder. “Aww, you really _do_ love us.”

“Can I just say though, like… you two are really cute together,” Oliver remarks. “Seriously. It’s almost ridiculous.”

“Oh, and just FYI,” Connor jumps in, “we already got dibs on being your Men of Honor at the wedding. And that’s not up for debate. I may not have great interior decorating skills, but I _will_ DJ for free.”

Laurel doesn’t debate it. Instead she just scoffs, and takes Michaela’s hand and draws it up to her lips to kiss it, brimming so full of happiness that she may very well be about to bubble over, burst out of her skin. They talk for a while longer, and drain their beers before saying their goodbyes and parting ways for the night.

And Laurel gets to take Michaela home at the end of that night, and every night. And she doesn’t think anything on earth could ever make her happier than that.

 

~

 

They live their lives in a seemingly endless summer haze.

The days blur into each other like watercolors, full of soft muted pastels and gold sunlight; long days and hot, humid nights they spend tangled together beneath their sheets. They live almost in a world of their own, constructed solely within the four walls of their apartments with all Laurel thinks she could ever need. Everything before – all the death, Sam, Lila, Sinclair, Frank, their pasts, all of it – feels like it’d happened in another life.

Until one day in late June a letter comes in the mail, and the outside world comes crashing in on them like a tidal wave all over again.

It’s a Saturday afternoon. Laurel is at Michaela’s apartment sitting at the table in the breakfast nook, wearing her lazy grey weekend sweatpants and munching on a chocolate chip muffin when the other girl comes striding back in the door, a pile of mail in her hands. She takes a seat at the table across from her, sorting through it idly and tossing a couple envelopes into a stack with a sigh.

Laurel perks up, looking over at her. “Anything interesting?”

“Oh, nothing much. Just watching my savings get sucked down the drain and my student loans go up to six figures,” Michaela mutters, frowning. “Remind me again why I went to law school instead of becoming a stripper?”

“Dunno. You’d be an _amazing_ stripper. But hey, if this all goes south at least you’ve got that as Plan B.” Laurel stops to think, and smirks. “That, or you let me be your sugar mama.”

Michaela scoffs. “Tempting, but no.”

“Too bad,” Laurel laments. “Imagine it, though. You drop out, I drop out. We fall back on my trust fund… Travel the world. Private jets. Cruises in the Pacific. Having sex all day, every day. Maybe settle down in a villa in the French countryside and own our own vineyard, if we’re not sick of each other by then. How’s that sound?”

Michaela doesn’t answer. Michaela hadn’t even been listening; instead she’s staring down at an envelope in her hands, brow furrowed, creases forming in her forehead. Her eyes are wide. If Michaela could go pale she imagines she’d be ghost-white, right about now.

Laurel frowns. “What’s that?”

“It’s from…” The other girl shakes her head, letting out a breath. “I-it’s from my father.”

Concern spikes under Laurel’s skin. “Do you… know what he wants?”

“I don’t know, I…” Michaela drifts off, turning the envelope over in her hands, like she’s debating whether or not she should rip it into shreds right this instant. “We weren’t on good terms when I left and… I never came back. I-I haven’t seen him or my mom in… Seven years, almost.” She pauses, flattening her lips into a line. “I never even called.”

They’re silent, for a long minute. Laurel can see the storm of conflicting emotions raging behind her eyes, before she exhales sharply all at once, gets to her feet, walks into the kitchen, and makes to toss the envelope unceremoniously into the garbage. She stops at the last second, though, and sets it on the counter instead, staring at the thing like it might very well come alive and try to bite her.

Laurel jumps up too, crossing the room. “Michaela…”

“We’re not talking about this,” is all she says, snapping the words at her and folding her arms. Her voice goes soft, all of a sudden. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Look, I…” Laurel shakes her head, trailing off. “I know what it’s like to hate your family, believe me, I do. But don’t you think you should read it, at least?”

Another, longer pause. Then, finally, with her back still turned to her, Michaela reaches for the envelope and tears it open, withdrawing a piece of paper. She scans it for a moment without a word, and Laurel can’t see her face and Michaela doesn’t seem inclined to turn to her and show it, so she waits, hangs back, knows her well enough to know that she needs space to process something like this.

Slowly, ever so slowly, Michaela finally turns, eyes locked on the letter and flicking back and forth across it. Finally, she lets out a shaky breath and lowers it, deflating suddenly, sagging underneath the weight of her own sorrow.

“It’s my mom. Adoptive… mom.” She pauses, swallowing. “She’s sick. Cancer. He wants me to come home to see her, before…”

Laurel goes to her at once, coming to a halt in front of her but stopping just short of drawing her into her arms. Michaela isn’t crying; she looks more shocked than anything, and Laurel can’t tell what she’s thinking, behind those big brown eyes that hide everything and nothing at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” she soothes. Michaela lowers her eyes, mouth moving without forming words for a moment, and Laurel reaches out, rubbing her hand up and down her arm.

“I don’t… I-I don’t know what to do, I just…” She backs away, sets the letter aside, and brushes past Laurel all at once, retreating to the other side of the kitchenette. “I don’t want to go back there.”

Another moment of silence. Then, Laurel frowns, voice low and undemanding. “I can’t tell you what to do. But if you don’t, Michaela… I don’t want you to spend the rest of your life regretting it-”

“I promised myself I’d never go back,” Michaela murmurs, more to herself than to anyone else. “I cut my ties. Burned all my bridges. Never looked back. It’s not who I am anymore, that place, those people, it’s…”

“They’re your family,” Laurel reminds her, gently. “They’ll always be your family.”

“Even if I did go,” Michaela says, folding her arms, “I don’t want to go alone, and-”

“So you won’t have to. I’ll come,” Laurel volunteers, without a second thought.

Michaela blinks. “And tell them you’re my _what_? That whole place is a… a-a snake pit teeming with homophobia and pretty much every kind of intolerance there is.”

Laurel shrugs, unfazed. “I’ll say I’m your best friend. There for moral support.”

Doubt flickers in Michaela’s eyes. Laurel takes a step towards her again, drawing closer, and raises a hand to her cheek and places it there, as softly as she can, barely anything more than a whisper-touch.

“Are you sure?” Michaela asks, and Laurel furrows her brow.

“Yeah, why?”

“I don’t know.” Michaela pauses, evading her gaze. “I don’t know if it’ll bother you, calling yourself that, and-”

“If it makes you feel safe, I’ll call myself whatever you want.” A grin works its way onto her lips, tiny and tentative. “I promise.”

Michaela pauses, still looking unsure. Then-

“Okay,” is all she says, finally. Michaela nods, and summons up a weak smile to send back to her. “Okay, I… guess I’m going home, then.”

“Uh uh.” Laurel reaches down, lacing their fingers together and holding her hands in the space between them, with a grip that silently dares anyone or anything to try to take this from her. “ _We’re_ going home.”


	24. XXIV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So this includes a bit of Laurel backstory on her dad but was written before this season started airing, so that's why it diverges :) Just a heads up!! 
> 
> Enjoy bitches!!

Michaela spends the next few days trying to find every possible reason not to go, no matter how farfetched.  

She goes to her bosses to request the time off, praying they’ll tell her no, that they’re too swamped and they need her – but just her luck it’s been a slow couple weeks, and they grant it without question. She has a scratchy throat on Tuesday? Must be the flu – a life-threatening kind. Bird flu, if that’s still a thing. Or swine flu. Whichever animal it is transmitting deadly viruses these days.

She relays her concerns to Laurel. Laurel just looks at her.  

Laurel, obviously, is not buying it.

She’s still grasping at straws the night before they leave, even as she lays her suitcase out onto the bed and packs as slow as humanly possible, lugging her body around the bedroom like it weighs a thousand pounds.

“This is a bad idea,” she mutters, as she rummages through her underwear drawer. “You don’t even _know_ how bad an idea this is.”

Laurel, who has hauled her suitcase up next to hers on the bed and begun packing too, rolls her eyes. “Quit trying to get out of this. You need to go and you know it.”

She scoffs, and grabs a handful of underwear. “You know what? I don’t pretend to be an expert on your family – not that I even _know_ anything about the mysterious Castillo clan to begin with.”

“Look, if you really don’t want to do this, don’t. I’m not trying to push you. I just think…” She drifts off, pursing her lips. “I know you’re gonna regret it if you don’t say goodbye to her.”

“What, to the woman who used to make me kneel and pray for hours until I had scabs on my knees if I so much as took an extra roll at dinner because I was a _shameful glutton_?” She shakes her head, and crams the handful of panties into her suitcase. “Yeah. She was a real saint.” Her shoulders droop, suddenly, as the memories flood back to her in one long, unpleasant deluge. “But…”

Laurel stops what she’s doing to look at her. “But…?”

“But… she was still my mom. Not by blood, but… because she chose to take me in. Gave me clothes and fed me and let me go to school. Gave me a chance, to have something better. And she didn’t have to do that.” Another pause. A lump festers in her throat. “And I wouldn’t be here today, without her. Without both of them.” She meets Laurel’s eyes, raising her chin. “So yes, you’re right. Just don’t rub it in.”

“Of course I won’t,” Laurel murmurs, crossing the room and coming to a stop before her. “And I’ll be with you, the whole time. Even if it gets bad. I promise.”

Michaela smiles, letting the words settle over them and soothe her, then brushes past her, continuing to pack. “You really think they’re going to buy the whole best friend thing?”

“Probably. I did it with my first girlfriend back at Brown, when we visited her parents over spring break. Worked like a charm. And, I mean, as long as we refrain from a full-on make out sesh front of everyone, I’m sure we’ll be fine.”

“I’ll take your word for it. Or else we’ll have driven like twenty hours to get screamed at and banished. And maybe possibly stoned.”

“We can still book a flight. Skip the miserable car trip altogether,” Laurel offers. “My dad’s treat.”

Michaela folds a pair of jeans and shakes her head. “I’m not taking your money. _Or_ your plane rides.”

Laurel feigns disappointment. “Aw, not even on our private jet? There’s a bed. We could… join the mile high club.”

She wriggles her eyebrows. Michaela rolls her eyes once more, trying her best to seem annoyed.

“Cut it out. You’re the horniest person I know.”

“Um, _not_ true,” Laurel remarks, as she closes her suitcase and tugs at the zipper. “We both know Connor don’t we?”

Michaela has to concede that one to her. “Fair enough.”

 

~

 

They set out early in the morning, just after dawn.

Laurel takes the first shift driving, hopped up on so much caffeine that Michaela can practically feel her buzzing next to her. Michaela drifts off with her forehead pressed up against the cool glass of the passenger side window within an hour, lulled to sleep by humming of the road beneath them, and wakes up sometime around noon to Laurel pulling over at a rest stop. They switch off then, and Michaela turns on NPR while she drives, listening to the announcer drone on in a soothing monotone about genetically-modified crops, interspersed with Laurel’s relentless teasing.

“Oh my God. What are you, a fifty year-old housewife?” she chortles, earning her a glare.

“Uh, excuse me? NPR is educational _and_ mentally stimulating. Maybe you’ll learn something.”

“You know what I’d rather learn about?” She reaches for the dial, and scans for a moment before settling on a pop station, giving Michaela a cheeky grin. “Taylor Swift’s latest _torrid_ love affair. You can’t tell me corn with messed up DNA is more interesting than that.”

Michaela can’t, in all honesty. So she caves, and listens, and looks over at the girl in the passenger side, sunglasses on, feet up on the dashboard, hair blowing in the summer breeze, enthusiastically singing along about good girl faith and a tight little skirt, and making little dolphin-wave motions out the window with her hand as she does.

She’s afraid – Michaela won’t deny that. But suddenly with Laurel by her side she feels fearless; invincible, impenetrable, diamond-hard. She’s always felt like she could conquer the world but now she _knows_ she can.

And she doesn’t know how she ever lived without this. Never wants to, ever again.

After only God knows how many hours of driving, half a dozen rest stops, and a good deal more shift-changes, they stop at a motel near the Tennessee-Alabama border for the night, exhausted to the point of dropping and just barely managing to hall their bags up to the second floor. Laurel shoves open their door, staggers in, and lands face-down on the bed without so much as bothering to take a look at her surroundings – which Michaela does, out of instinct. And it’s not a shitty motel but not a nice one either; Laurel had offered to pay for something better, of course, and Michaela had refused, ever the frugal penny pincher.

The stains of dubious origin on the comforter and carpet are kind of making her start to regret that decision, though.

“Well,” she mutters, leaving her suitcase at the door and taking in the oh-so-flattering peeling puke-green paint on the walls, “at least it doesn’t smell.”

“ _Mmmph mmm_ ,” Laurel says to the bedding, still face-down. 

Her words aren’t intelligible – and most definitely not _words_ – but Michaela makes a sound of agreement anyway and goes for the bathroom. “Whatever. I’m gonna take a shower.”

Laurel doesn’t answer, nor does she budge, so Michaela leaves her, finding the cramped bathroom in a similar state of borderline-dissatisfactory cleanliness; not filthy enough to be totally disgusting, but also not clean, with grimy tile flooring and what looks like mold in one corner of the shower. Normally she’d care, but her head is so heavy that she can barely stand upright, let alone summon the energy to go to the front desk and bitch out them out to get another room. So she sucks it up, strips, slips on a shower cap and turns on the shower, pleased to find a spray of lukewarm water raining from the showerhead. It might as well be heaven after an interminably long sweaty day of driving, and she almost moans aloud as the jet hits her, throwing her head back, basking in it.

She cranks it down a bit colder after a moment, letting it soak her through, then sets about washing herself, trying not to sway on her feet from fatigue. A few minutes pass. Then, out of nowhere, just as she finishes scrubbing down her body, Michaela hears the door creak open, followed by the plastic shower curtain peeling back ever-so-slowly, revealing a buck naked Laurel on the other side. The smile she gives her when she comes into view isn’t seductive, or sensuous, or even mischievous; it just looks tired too, and she goes for her at once, hands coming to rest on her sides, fingernails lightly raking across her skin.

She leans the whole weight of her body against Michaela without saying a word, but she doesn’t need to; Michaela understands, gets what she wants, hears her unspoken language loud and clear, and so she lets Laurel hold her, the only sound to be heard the hissing of the shower water as it pours over them, insulating them in a bubble from the outside world, washing it all down the drain. The press of Laurel’s body against her makes her bones and muscles all hum a silent chorus of want, but it’s muted, subdued, not hot and smoldering and insistent like she finds arousal usually is for her.

Just comforting. Quiet.

Michaela turns her head back slightly to look at her, and smiles sleepily. “I thought you were out.”

“Almost,” Laurel murmurs, her eyes closed. “But I wasn’t about to miss the chance to take a shower with you now was I?”

Michaela turns to face her, and for one long moment she just stares at Laurel, inexplicably captivated. The cheap florescent light above them makes Laurel’s skin glow a sickly green-yellow hue, but she’s stunning even so – stunning, in the way her wet hair clings to the side of her cheeks, framing her face. Stunning, with the hazy affection in her eyes, the way little droplets of water bead on her breasts and trickle down the valley between them, the way she rubs her lips together absentmindedly, chewing on her lower one now and then.

Stunning, in the way she can look stunning even in a place like this, even so tired she can barely stand. _Stunning._

Their bodies are pressed closer now, their breasts brushing, foreheads leaning in together. Michaela is using Laurel to hold herself up just as much as Laurel is using Michaela to hold _her_ self up, like two crumbling pillars bowing in towards each other to keep each other from collapsing entirely. Michaela reaches up, tracing a finger across the smoothness of her shoulder, which drops back down to her side the instant Laurel leans in, seizing her lips in a kiss that’s barely even a peck, barely a touch of her lips at all. Laurel hums, some other silent word, when she pulls back. Michaela tells her with her eyes that she understands.

Doesn’t know what it is she understands, exactly. Just that she does.

“I don’t want to go,” Michaela confesses, ending the silence. Her voice is muffled by the shower, so quiet she can tell Laurel has to strain to hear her.

The other girl flattens her lips into a line. “I know.”

“Let’s not, then,” she suggests suddenly, too tired to think about what she’s saying, think rationally, be reasonable. “Let’s just keep driving. Let’s never go back to Philly. We could run away, somewhere. Some small town… where no one would ever find us. We could adopt a cat. I’d write bad crime fiction…”

“I’d own a bakery,” Laurel suggests, filling in the lines of the fantasy for her with a sparkle in her eye. “And make you those fancy artisan bagels you love fresh every morning.”

Michaela looks skeptical. “Do you even know how to bake?”

“Not if it isn’t out of a box. But who’s gonna be able to tell?”

They share a laugh, soft and reverberating off the tile walls. Then, they sober up, and Michaela flicks her eyes up to meet Laurel’s, wide, full of sincerity.

“It’s never gonna be that simple, is it?” she asks, grimly, a little sadly.

Laurel shakes her head. “No.” _We gave up ‘simple’ the second we sold our souls to Annalise Keating._

She doesn’t say the words, but Michaela hears them loud and clear nonetheless, and she knows they’re true. Her hand makes it way up to Laurel’s cheek of its own volition and cups it, her thumb idly caressing her skin, and Laurel turns her face into her palm with a sigh as if seeking comfort, letting her eyelids flutter shut once more, weighted down with sadness too. They can never be simple; Michaela knows this. _She_ can never be simple. As good as it sounds now she knows she’d grow weary of it eventually. Restless. She’d long for something more, in due time.

She’s not destined for easy things – for a simple life. She’s destined to face down armies, move mountains, change and reshape and sculpt the word with her hands like clay. She is not and has never been destined for easy things, for a life she could lie back and coast through without difficulty. She knows Laurel isn’t, either.

But here, with Laurel now… There’s no reason they can’t be simple, if only for a moment.

“Would you call me crazy…” Michaela drifts off, voice tiny and timid, “if I said I thought I was falling for you?”

“Aren’t we all crazy at this point?” Laurel jokes, but her humor feels off, artificial, like a defense mechanism. Michaela gives her a look, beckoning her to be serious, and so Laurel’s expression changes, softens. She shakes her head. “No. I wouldn’t call you crazy, _princesa_.”

 _Princesa_. Something about that word just _does_ something to her, every single time, without fail. It forces a full-bodied shudder through her, travels straight to her clit and makes her throb, invokes some kind of crazy Pavlovian response. It’s like setting a wildfire ablaze in seconds, coursing through every inch of her, forming lava in her veins and melting down any walls of resistance she has left. And she melts against her too, surging forward with a kiss, wet between her legs and very much cognizant of the fact that it’s _not_ just because of the shower water. She nips at her bottom lip, and runs her hands up and down her body, cherishing the feeling of each gentle curve, the pillowy flesh of her breasts, the firmness of her abdomen, the suppleness of her body, slippery and gleaming. It isn’t long before she has Laurel pinned up against the wall, dipping her head to suckle at her breasts and dipping a hand down between her legs, stroking across her velvet folds, brushing lightly against her clit as the water pours down on them from above.

Laurel tilts her head back, making a sound halfway between a gasp and a laugh. “Well, I’m awake _now_.”

And Michaela makes damn sure she stays that way.

It isn’t long before she has Laurel unraveling, coming onto her fingers and shuddering out her release with a series of airy gasps, more beautiful than Michaela thinks any music could ever be. Her eyes flutter closed, face scrunching up momentarily before relaxing into the picture of serenity, and it’s enough to let Michaela know she’s done well. It’s what she always does: seeks approval, and needs it from Laurel especially, even now.

She asks anyway, just to be sure, releasing the word on one breath. “Good?”

“You don’t always need to ask me that, y’know.” Laurel gives her a loopy, blissed-out little grin in the afterglow, biting her lip. “By now you should know you’re the best.”

Michaela smiles back, almost moaning aloud at the words, luxuriating in them. “I like hearing you say it.”

“You are,” Laurel pants, and kisses her. “You’re the best. You’re so good, Michaela…”

Listening to Laurel praise her is pretty much the most potent aphrodisiac Michaela thinks exists, and within seconds that warmth, that hunger and _need_ brewing between her legs, grows doubly as insistent. Laurel senses that, a cat in heat just as much as she is.

Then Laurel pounces, and Laurel goes to work on her, and Michaela proceeds to forget everything in a second’s notice, morphing into a mewling, moaning, shaking mess up against the wall at the touch of her hands; the touch of her mouth, when Laurel kneels and pries her thighs apart and spreads her for her tongue. It’s captivating, the sight of her on her knees, all bare, wet breasts and slick shiny body and roaming, pruned hands; so hot Michaela thinks she could almost expire right then and there.

She doesn’t mind. Figures there are _definitely_ worse ways to go.

They finish washing themselves, after. Michaela lathers shampoo into Laurel’s hair, and Laurel lathers soap over every single accessible inch of her, letting the warmth of the water lull their bodies closer and closer to sleep. Michaela holds her when they finish, beneath the spray of the water, reveling in the heat of her body, the comfort of skin-to-skin contact, every inch of Laurel pressed against every inch of her – no barriers, nothing in the way. Nowhere to hide, no lies. It’s more intimate than anything they’ve done before, even sex; just holding each other. Just being two people.

Normal and simple and entirely unremarkable – and maybe, just maybe, the tiniest bit in love.

“This is going to be a disaster,” Michaela tells her, after they’ve dried off and stepped back into the bedroom. She tugs a baggy grey t-shirt over her head, glancing down at where Laurel lays on top of the covers, in a similarly baggy shirt and red panties. “A grade A, category five disaster.”

“Okay, but does anyone have a family that _isn’t_ kind of a disaster?” Laurel asks. “Whatever it is can’t top mine, anyway.”

“Oh yeah? So does that mean you’re finally gonna tell me about this horrible, awful, despicable family of yours, or leave me hanging again? Because this whole mystery thing is getting kind of old.”

Laurel looks at her, seeming a bit hesitant and folding her hands on her chest. “Will it make you feel better about going if I do?”

Michaela doesn’t bat an eye, and lies down next to her, listening to the old mattress springs squeak in protest. She rolls over onto her back and glances sideways at her, intent.

“Yes. It will. Now spill.”

Laurel sighs, then springs to her feet and makes her way over to the mini fridge. She pulls out one of the water bottles stashed there, and Michaela’s not really sure if she’s thirsty or just wants to avoid eye contact at first, as she begins.

“Mainly? It’s my father who’s the despicable one,” she divulges, trying to seem nonchalant, but Michaela knows damage when she sees it. Laurel turns, raising her eyebrows. “And _no_ , he’s not a drug kingpin, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

Michaela blinks. “I wasn’t.”

“I wouldn’t blame you if you were,” Laurel mutters, walking back over to the bed, setting her water aside after taking a few sips, and plopping down cross-legged. “Most people hear ‘rich Mexican girl’ and automatically assume ‘cartel princess.’” A wry, humorless grin makes its way onto her face. “I almost wish he were. I think he’s worse than all of them combined.”

“What could possibly be worse than all of them combined?”

“The filthiest of all the filthy politicians. And… the slimiest of all the slimy businessmen. He’s a millionaire. It’s all filthy money, too. Every cent that’s sending me to school is made off the backs of starving children slaving away in Cambodian mines for less than a dollar a day. Or the diamond mines, in Africa. Robbing the land of its resources and exploiting the locals and sucking them dry until they have absolutely nothing left. And then pretty much leaving them for dead.”

“And you think that’s worse than drugs?”

“Oh, I’m sure he’s in bed with a cartel or two. Or ten,” Laurel says, almost like it’s a joke, but she doesn’t smile or laugh, or even come close. “And he hasn’t gotten to where he is by being nice. All sorts of tax evasion. Blackmail. Extortion. Kidnapping people and… having his goons torture information out of them.” A pause. Laurel seems choked up, suddenly. “I had a boyfriend once, back in high school. Sophomore year. He cheated on me with another girl, broke my heart. Normal dads would… I don’t know, buy me a pint of ice cream and let me cry it out.” Another pause. She gives a tearful laugh that almost sounds maniacal. “He had his men tie him up and cut off one of his fingers. And made me watch. For my _honor_ , or something. He said that’s why he did it. For my fucking honor.”

Michaela goes very, very still, still as death, but doesn’t speak. She doesn’t think she can.

“It’s not like that was the only time I saw him do something like that,” Laurel continues, and she’s still smiling, fucking _smiling_ and laughing softly and crying, eyes red rimmed, looking half-insane. “That’s why everything we’ve done… It hasn’t screwed me up, as much. Sam wasn’t the first dead body I saw.” Again she make a sound halfway between a laugh and a sob, shaking her head. “He wasn’t even the tenth.”

“Laurel…” Michaela breathes, frozen in place, not sure if she should reach out to her. Instead she just stares, eyes wide, horror written all over her face that she can’t hide, can’t even remotely try to conceal.

Finally, Laurel meets her eyes, and swipes the tears off her cheeks hurriedly with a sniff. “So, yeah. That’s who my father is. That’s why I left home. To get away. To not become part of that life – and I did anyway, here.” Her face crumples, a bit. “The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, huh?”

“It’s not like that,” Michaela tells her, emphatic. “You… I know what we’ve done, _God_ , the things we’ve done, but… You’re not a monster.” She sits up suddenly, leaning forward onto her knees and reaching out to place a hand on her cheek. “You’re not like him, Laurel.”

“I dated him, though. Pretty much. Frank is _just like_ him.” Laurel laughs, and it comes out in a rough, dark, throaty burst. “I’m such a-a classic case of daddy issues, I hate myself.”

“If it helps,” Michaela soothes gently, managing a smile, “I am too.”

Laurel relaxes, somewhat. She reaches up, and curls her hand around her wrist, trying to smile but unable to muster up anything more than the faint pursing of her lips. Michaela shifts closer, kissing her forehead, her nose, then moving to the side to kiss the tears off her cheeks. She tastes the salt of them when she does, the bitter salt of her sorrow, coating her lips and tongue; the essence of her. All her pain and suffering in that flavor.

She thinks she’s never felt closer to anyone than she does in that moment.

“I hate seeing you cry,” she murmurs, and remembers Laurel saying the same thing to her, what must be ages ago. She brushes a strand of wet hair out of her face, sighing. “I’m so tired of the both of us crying.”

Laurel chuckles, that vivacious light in her eyes shining through the tears, bright and eternal. “I’ll never make you cry again. Promise.”

“Good,” Michaela says. “’Cause I won’t either.”

They stay like that for a while longer, sitting face to face on the bed, anchored together. Michaela combs the damp tangles gently out of her hair, and holds her. Holds her even despite of the fact she has no clue what tomorrow with bring; holds her even though she may as well be walking into some huge, great unknown, back into her past, back to her old self; that poor swamp girl she’d killed dead and buried six feet under.

Outside, a cloud sweeps over the moon, dulling its light and making darkness close in on them, heavy and thick. And she’s not scared, suddenly – of any of it. Of going back. Facing her past. Facing her father.

She’s not scared. Now that she has Laurel she thinks it’ll take a hell of a lot more for the world to scare her ever again.


	25. XXV

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Obviously the show is going in a different direction with Michaela's backstory, but eh. I'm just gonna continue ignoring the trainwreck that is season three and carry on in my happy lil world here!!!

A storm is brewing when they drive into town the next afternoon.

The clouds in the sky are grey and foreboding, pregnant with the promise of rain. She’d think it was a bad omen, if she were the superstitious type. Laurel can already tell Michaela is nervous, and the sight only seems to make her more so – and so she reaches over, takes her hand, and holds it on top of the center console between the seats, giving her a reassuring squeeze.

The other girl perks up a little, at that. Raises her chin. Looks ever so slightly braver, and drives on with renewed confidence, down the skinny gravel road through the swampy wetland, surrounded on all sides by bald cypress trees with fat buttressed trunks and algae-filled ponds. It makes Laurel a bit nervous, like one wrong turn might send them hurtling into the water, but Michaela seems to know what she’s doing well enough that she keeps her concerns to herself. The last bit of civilization they passed through was almost half an hour ago, and Laurel has no clue how they can possibly get any further south into Louisiana than they are now – but still, Michaela keeps going, eyes fixed firmly ahead.

“You sure you know where we’re going?” Laurel finally asks, pursing her lips and trying to read an old road map she’d found in her glove compartment, but not having much luck.

Michaela nods. “Yeah.”

“What’s this place called, anyway?”

“Bayou Laroche,” she answers. “It’s unincorporated. Tiny. Probably not even on the map.”

“It’s not on this map, that’s for sure. How big is it?”

“Fifty people, maybe. There used to be more. Katrina destroyed it. We barely made it out alive.”

“Yet here you are,” Laurel observes, eye still scanning the map in her lap. Michaela scoffs.

“Here I am. I’m pretty hard to kill, turns out.”

Laurel chuckles under her breath, and on they drive, their tires crunching noisily on the gravel, until finally Michaela pulls the car off to the side of the road and parks it, in front of a skinnier gravel path leading through the swap, to what looks like a clearing in the distance.

“We have to walk from here. The road’s washed out,” she explains, stepping out. “We could’ve taken a boat from the next town over, but I get seasick. And me puking all over you would be a terrible start to this… already terrible trip. _Or_ a good look.”

“Optimism much?”

Laurel climbs out and circles around the car, popping the trunk and withdrawing her black duffle bag of clothes and toiletries and other essentials. The air is thick and muggy, to the point of being downright suffocating, the scent of it rich with dirt, earthy. An eerie layer of fog has gathered in the distance, like clouds hugging the ground. Something is buzzing incessantly around her head, and the swamp is a cacophony of bird calls and croaking frogs, hitting them from all directions. She’s glad she wore tennis shoes, at least – though she’s starting to regret the tank top and jean shorts idea, because more than likely she’s going to wake up to half a dozen mosquito bites in the morning.

That is, if she’s being honest, the least of her worries right now.

She stews on the rest, as she and Michaela make their way down the gravel path. She’d told Michaela her parents would probably buy the best friend charade but there’s no guarantee they will, if they’ll disown her and kick them out and tell them to go to hell the second they enter. She doesn’t know them, has no clue if they’re actually dangerous, or _would_ be if they somehow found out. She’s fairly certain they wouldn’t hurt either of them if they’re as religious as Michaela says, but she can’t be sure. Has no clue what to expect.

They might as well be walking into some huge, great unknown, off the map to the very end of the world. And so Laurel reaches down, takes her hand, grasping it tight, knowing she’ll be okay doing that if she can just do _this_.

Michaela furrows her brow, and Laurel grins, her tone verging on somber, all-too-serious, though she tries half-heartedly to inject a bit of humor. “What? I’m not gonna get to hold your hand the whole time we’re there. Let me… just do it while I can.”

The other girl opens her mouth, as if about to protest, then seems to reconsider and lets it fall shut. Instead Michaela blushes and gives her hand a silent squeeze, telling her _yes_ without a word, _yes, don’t let go, please never let go_.

And so Laurel doesn’t. Never will.

Well – _never_ until they see buildings rise up in the distance, fading into view. She lets go then; it definitely won’t do for them to walk into town hand in hand, confronting everyone head-on with their depravity. So, reluctantly, Laurel wiggles her fingers out of Michaela’s hand, stepping to the side to put space between them.

She’s done this before. Been on the down-low, for the sake of a girl’s family. Been scared into hiding herself, who she is, regressing all the way back to her adolescence.

And fuck, she’d forgotten how much it _sucks_.

Back at home they can be free, Laurel reminds herself, as they enter the clearing and step into the town for the first time. She’s not going to be stupid or rash or reckless. She’ll do this for Michaela, however Michaela wants, so Michaela can get this closure she needs and move on. All for Michaela.

For Michaela. Michaela – her only reason. All her reasons. For her.

There’s an old metal sign on the side of the gravel road when they arrive: brown and rusted, tilted backward, spelling out _Bayou Laroche_ with faded white lettering. Something is written below that, maybe the population, maybe some welcome message, but it’s been weathered too much to read properly and they pass it without stopping to try, venturing deeper into the town.

It’s a tiny place, just like Laurel had expected. Built right on the bayou, with most of the brown, ramshackle old buildings bordering the murky water, some on stilts above it, some with docks extending out into it, rusty fishing boats tied up to them. There are some shacks too, shacks she figures are like the one Michaela had mentioned to her before, mostly made of metal, looking like a stiff wind would collapse them in seconds. The buildings are placed haphazardly, no road running through the town – just the path, the only semblance of order or organization. Closer to land there are rundown mobile homes. Sheds, here and there.

Everything seems to be in a state of disrepair, or nearly totally crumbling, and the ground is a mess of loose pieces of plywood and metal scraps and underbrush and mud, so thick she thinks they could sink down into it. There’s an ancient school bus sitting off the side of the path with no tires, door hanging open, half tilted sideways, so chewed at by rust that it’s hard to discern what it once was. There are cars parked about too – not many, but some, looking like they haven’t moved in ages and all covered with that same rust. The entire _town_ seems covered with it, all varied shades of red-orange erosion and decay, all brown, sepia tones, like an antique photograph.

It’d felt like she was walking off into the end of the world, before. And the more Laurel looks around, the more she’s convinced this place _is_ the end of the world.

The town is surrounded by the same bald cypress trees from before, these ones draped with grey gossamer moss, dangling over the water like millions of sunlit spider webs. There’s no breeze here either, only that same humidity from before, clogging her throat and weighing down the air. The whole place and everything in it has a dull, drab brown hue painted over it, dull like greyscale – except for the swamp maples dotted about, blooming red as blood. A few residents are milling around in the street, and stop to look at the two of them when they come into view, like they’re from another universe, and they might as well be. Something tells her this place doesn’t see visitors often.

Except the prodigal daughter returning. Except Michaela Pratt.

Michaela stops on the path, halting in her tracks without warning, ostensibly to look around. Her chin is held high, shoulders squared; outwardly strong, impenetrable, with that strength she’s always loved about her. A million memories are written behind her eyes, playing like a film, and Laurel wishes she could watch it with her, right then. Wishes she could know everything.

“This is it,” she says, finally, letting out a breath.

Michaela raises her chin just a bit higher, as if the new angle will give her courage, make her taller. She’s steeling herself. Plating herself with armor. Laurel doesn’t know for what, exactly.

Then Michaela takes a step forward, down the path towards a cluster of stilted houses near the water. Laurel doesn’t know what she’s steeling herself for, what she’s walking into. She can’t do anything to protect her, save her from whatever this is, the demon of her past, and neither of them want her to. She’s a spectator here; a bystander in her world. All she can do is follow.

So Laurel does.

 

~

 

They come to a stop in front of one of the more intact houses in town.

It’s small, maybe twice the size of the mobile homes in town, with chipped yellow siding and a roof missing more than a few shingles. It’s up on stilts like all the rest to keep it from flooding, with a precarious wooden staircase leading up to the front door. There are flowers growing out front, in a tiny, ill-kept garden, and a colorful sign over the door, with _Welcome_ scrawled in large cursive loops. There’s a wooden cross next to it, as if to bless them on the way in. _House of God_.

It makes Laurel want to laugh. She’s pretty sure if she ever set foot into an actual church again she’d probably spontaneously burst into flames.

“Home sweet home,” Michaela mutters, setting her bag down with a _thump_ when they reach the top of the creaky old stairs.

She hesitates. Doesn’t so much as move a muscle, or make to knock on the door. She’s wondering if this is a mistake, Laurel knows; a horrible, godawful, catastrophic mistake. Maybe it is. No one can go back in time and Michaela looks like she’s been transported to some other era, another world, in this place she used to belong in but never will again.

Laurel wishes she knew what to say – but she doesn’t, so she stays quiet. She’s bad with words, always has been. Her presence is all she can offer her.

Her presence is the only reassurance she can give. And all she can do is hope it’s enough.

“Well,” Michaela says, finally, and sucks in a breath, raising her hand to knock. “Here goes nothing.”

She does it. She doesn’t back off at the last second, chicken out. She does it, knocks, four short raps, then waits, rocking back and forth a little on her heels, shifting her weight from leg to leg, almost childlike in her nervousness. She’s clad in a sundress, modest and tea-length and stopping at her knees; yellow, with a pattern of daises, one she’s never seen her wear before. Her hair is loose around her shoulders, frizzy from the humidity. A thin layer of sweat glistens on her forehead. Her feet are planted shoulder-length apart, firm on the ground, like she’s rooted there. She’s a drop of glowing, vibrant color in this otherwise grey place. She’s beauty incarnate. Her Dulcinea.

 _Would you call me crazy if I said I thought I was falling for you?_ Michaela had asked her last night – and no, Laurel wouldn’t. Not even a little.

Not even at all.

The door creaks open then, jolting her out of her reverie. And there, suddenly before them, stands the man Laurel can only assume is Michaela’s father.

He’s tall – imposingly so. Dark skin and dark hair, features slightly obscured by the screen door in front of him, but a strong, square, clean shaven jawline with a faint mustache above his lips. Small eyes, which widen the instant they come into view. He’s built heavily; an enormous man, wearing a suit jacket that bulges forward slightly to accommodate his stomach. He goes still as a statue, eyes locked on Michaela so intently Laurel doesn’t even think he notices she’s there.

“My God,” is all he says, and his voice is a deep bass, rumbling with a thick Cajun accent.

A pause. Laurel can feel the tension in the air, so thick she can barely move, doesn’t dare even to breathe lest she make a sound and disturb them. Michaela stares. Her father stares back. Then, slowly, very slowly, he reaches out and pulls open the screen door separating them, letting it fall back, breaking down the barrier between them with one swift movement. Michaela gulps, and steps forward, and seems to shrink beneath his gaze, suddenly looking much smaller than Laurel thinks she’s ever seen her.

“Hi, daddy,” she breathes.

It happens fast, after that. In seconds. Her father steps forward, more of a lumber than a step, then down onto the porch with them, and takes her into his arms, and he’s so tall that he almost envelops Michaela entirely in his embrace. He curls his arms around her like he can’t quite believe she’s real, and gradually Michaela does the same, bringing her hands up to rest on his back.

Finally, they break apart, and Michaela clears her throat, stepping back. Her father shakes his head, tears beading in his eyes.

“Seven years,” he says, stunned, hands still on her shoulders. “It’s been so long, my God, just look at you. _Listen_ to you.”

“I should’ve… come back sooner, I know. I’m sorry.” Michaela lowers her eyes, then flicks them over at Laurel and remembers herself. “Uh, daddy, this is Laurel. My… best friend.”

 _Best friend_. Her father doesn’t bat an eye, or give her even the faintest look of suspicion at that; he simply extends his hand, nodding at her. “Pleased to meet you, Laurel.”

Laurel smiles, feeling all different kinds of awkward and strange but forcing herself to relax. “Likewise, sir. Thank you.”

“Please, call me Reverend,” he urges, and steps aside, beckoning them to enter. “Come in, come in. I’ll get your bags.”

They do just that, and he does just that, placing them on the floor inside the door. The interior of the house is old and dusty, but nicer than the outside, all wood floors and red wallpaper, adorned with all kinds of religious imagery – crosses, pictures of Jesus and the Virgin Mary, an ornate little holy water font – along with other things, like bright paintings of calla lilies and colorful needlepoint designs of fish. The furniture is simple. _Everything_ about it is simple, bare necessities, nothing more, but somehow still welcoming and warm.

“It looks… just like I remember,” Michaela murmurs, more to herself than the two of them. She makes her way around the room, stopping at a needlepoint design of a butterfly, with a quote stitched under it. “Mama did these, worked on them all the time Where is…” She turns, suddenly, and looks to her father. “Where is she?”

Her father stops in his tracks suddenly, giving her a look of sorrow, shaking his head. “I’d thought… maybe my second letter wouldn’t get to you in time, if you came.”

“What second letter?” Michaela furrows her brow. Then, realization sweeps her features, darkening them. “What… what’re you talking about? Is she… She didn’t-”

He shakes his head, takes a step closer to her, and sighs, the sound the heaviest and weariest Laurel has ever heard. “Last week. In her sleep. I’m sorry, Michaela, I… I am.”

“She…” Michaela’s voice breaks, lower lip quivering. It almost wrenches Laurel’s heart out of her chest. “N-no. _No_. That’s why I… I came to say goodbye, I never…”

It kills Laurel to watch her crumble, watch the news break her down, tears springing forth from her eyes, her shoulders drooping, entire demeanor transforming. Her father goes to her, tries to reach out, but Michaela turns away, and Laurel can’t see her face but she knows she’s raising her chin, trying to dam up her tears, not wanting them to see her cry, not wanting to _allow_ herself to cry.

They’re silent, for a moment. Then-

“Where is she?” Michaela turns and asks, voice thick with sorrow. “Where did-”

“Outside,” her father answers, hands folded, an air of sadness hanging over him like the storm clouds outside. “I’ll show you.”

He goes for the door, with Michaela hot on his heels. Laurel hesitates, at first, not wanting to intrude. Then, Michaela looks back at her, begs her with her eyes to follow. And again, she does.

She follows. Of course she does.

 

~

 

The grave is beneath a willow tree, on the edge of town.

The ground is muddy, but Michaela kneels in it anyway and it dirties her knees, the hem of her dress. She doesn’t seem to care, or even notice.

The only headstone on the grave is a little stone sculpture of a cross, blackened and weathered in places almost as if with age, and no name or inscription, a mound of fresh dirt before it. There are other similar grave markers around them; Laurel thinks this must be the town cemetery. It’s unkempt, with dying flowers littering the graves, tall grass overgrowing part of it. None of the other graves have names or epitaphs, either; they stand alone, some with only twig crosses, some without anything. They look lonesome, almost, she thinks; the only things there to honor them the wind, the rain. Their only company in death the elements.

No name. No inscription. Just blankness; just rough, jagged stone. It might as well be a total stranger in the grave before them, but Michaela doesn’t seem to care about that, either – or if she does, she doesn’t mention it.

Laurel hangs back, standing behind her. So does her father, and after a moment of silence, listening to the eerie, almost otherworldly whistling of the wind, he speaks.

“It took her fast,” he says, grim, face drawn, lips pursed tight. “Cancer in her stomach, the doctors said. Even if they could’ve done anything… we didn’t have the money. She suffered, but not for long, and she’s with the Lord now, Michaela. She’s in a better place, in His arms.”

It occurs to Laurel that he doesn’t seem very distraught – not like a grieving husband should. Briefly, she wonders why that is, why he wouldn’t be, but quickly decides that’s a problem for another time, a question for another day.

Michaela doesn’t answer. She doesn’t even budge, frozen as still as a stone angel; a silent sentinel, eternally watching over the dead. Her father stands there with them for a moment, as if in some show of solidarity, praying under his breath, eyes risen to the sky, then murmurs something excusing himself and withdraws back towards the house, leaving the two of them alone.

It’s a long time before Michaela speaks. The wind is picking up, ushering a storm in on it; the dark clouds swirl ominously, and grow ever-darker. Leaves tumble off the trees, scatter around them. Laurel takes a step forward, stopping closer to her side, but still Michaela doesn’t move.

Then, finally, in the tiniest voice she’s ever heard, she says, “Her name was Colette.”

Laurel glances down at her. Thinks about placing a hand on her shoulder, but refrains. “Yeah?”

“Yeah,” she murmurs, and she isn’t crying; she looks hollow, empty, her face blank as the makeshift headstone. “They don’t… They don’t even have her name here.”

A pause. Michaela sighs, and the wind carries the sound on it, somehow making it louder and longer.

“I know she wasn’t my mother. And… she wasn’t always nice or… anything, and a lot of her parenting probably screwed me up. A lot. But I thought I’d get to say goodbye, at least.” She swallows thickly. “I’d probably still be stuck here if it wasn’t for her. She was the one who wanted me. I’d still be… backwater swamp trash with no future. No nothing.” Another pause, longer, heavier. “And I loved her. And I said she wasn’t my mother but… she was. She always was.”

Laurel decides to chance it, then. She reaches down without caring who sees, placing a hand on her shoulder, not sure what she’s trying to do but only knowing that she has to touch her somehow, let Michaela feel her, let her know she’s there and always will be. That finally gets her to look up, and she flashes her a little grimace-grin, covering her hand with hers as the wind whips at them, tossing their hair in their faces, turning Michaela’s into a wild windblown mane.

“Storm’s coming,” Michaela observes, as if she barely notices the angry sky, the thunder drumming faintly in the distance. She rises to stand, palms and knees and dress muddy, and again tries to summon up a feeble smile for her. “We should get in.”

They do, plodding back towards the little tipsy stilted house. And Laurel leads, this time. Leads her away from the gravesite, away from that past; away from the storm and up to dry land. That’s what it feels like, to be with her: escaping a storm, finding refuge on higher ground. Safety. She feels safe with her, always has, and safe isn’t a word she uses lightly, nor is it a feeling she’s felt very many times in her life. But she feels safe, with her.

She leads. This time, Michaela follows.


	26. XXVI

She’s muddy.

She used to get muddy a lot as a child, playing outside for hours in the swamp. Mud pies, mud castles; all sorts of ornate mud architecture, adorned with sticks and leaves and pebbles and inevitably tetanus-filled chunks of scrap metal she’d find abandoned on the ground. She was always a curious child, used to pick up worms and crawfish and frogs and all other manner of living creatures to play with them too. She’d come home filthy, head to toe, mud caked on her palms, clothes ruined – which would always inevitably earn her a scolding from her mother, something about the Lord not wanting to see _filthy sinful little urchins_ like her running around, before she’d wash her off in the bathtub, scrub her skin until it turned red and raw and ached.

Then she’d send her to bed without dinner – to add insult to injury, Michaela supposes.

She not so fondly reminisces about that as she rinses off in the freezing cold little shower, doing her best to condense her routine down quite a bit to get out as quick as possible. Thankfully the Reverend’s home had always been more well-equipped than the others in town, with running water and decent electricity.

It’s the little things, she reminds herself. Be grateful for the little things. Her mother had said that too.

As a kid, coming here after her birth mom had died, running water had felt like a miracle. It doesn’t, now. She’s so much bigger, now. Older. Everything here seems to have shrunk and she feels too tall and too awkward and lumbering, like a giant in a dollhouse, like she doesn’t belong. And she doesn’t, not anymore. Maybe she never really had.

Maybe she’d never been meant to belong in this place at all.

She steps out and dries herself off, then dresses and makes her way back into her bedroom – her childhood bedroom, nearly identical to how she remembers it. Her parents had always been puritans when it came to decorating, never allowing her to put up any posters or pictures that didn’t somehow incorporate some member of the holy family – preferably Jesus, though Michaela had always liked Mary better. Her mother had given her one thing, though: one of her needlepoints, a picture of two robins with the words _To love and be loved is the greatest joy on earth_ stitched beneath them.

It’s still hanging right where she’d left it, where she’d used to stare up at it for hours as a girl while kneeling in front of her bed, hands clasped in prayer that had mostly been pretend but sometimes actually had been genuine. She’s not sure what she’d prayed for; it’s all foggy and distant and yellowed with time, now. But she had prayed, and stared up at that picture until every single stitch was imprinted on her mind, until she had even the tiniest minute details and mistakes memorized, until she wondered what love felt like, real love, the so-called greatest joy on earth when all she’d ever known of love – _love of the Lord_ – was far from happy, felt more like fear than anything.

And now beneath that picture sits Laurel, hair damp from a shower, dressed in a baggy t-shirt and shorts. And she wonders, maybe, if whatever she’d prayed for as a child came true, and came to her after all.

“Hey,” she greets, and Laurel’s head pops up, her features relaxing into a smile.

“Hey,” she says, and scoots over on the bed to give Michaela room next to her. “You know, this is definitely not what I thought your childhood bedroom would look like.”

Michaela takes a seat, narrowing her eyes playfully. “And _what_ , exactly, did you think it was going to look like?”

“I don’t know. Disney princess stuff. Or… Backstreet Boys posters.”

“Okay, even if my father _hadn’t_ condemned pop music as the Devil’s work, I still wouldn’t have done that. Not like I had the money for it anyway.”

“I’m sorry,” Laurel tells her suddenly, voice low. “About your mom.”

Michaela pauses, then reaches for her jar of lotion and rubs some onto her legs, working it in slowly. “Yeah. Me too. But, I mean, even if I’d gotten to say goodbye… I don’t know what I would’ve said anyway. It’s probably for the best it happened like it did.”

“I…” Laurel drifts off, sighing. “Are you okay, though?”

Another pause. Michaela looks up at her, gives her a half-assed grin. “Let’s just say I’m working on it.”

“Girls?”

They both look up, startled by the voice, and find her father standing in the doorway, dressed for bed as well. Michaela tenses up instinctively, can’t help but imagine disapproval written in his face even though there is none, like she’s done something wrong even just sitting here next to Laurel, committed a sin every second they’re close to each other.

“Hi,” Michaela greets, and rises to stand, feeling the need to distance herself from Laurel for some reason. She folds her arms, making herself smile. “We’re, uh, we’re in for the night.”

“I made up the couch for your friend,” he tells her, then looks to Laurel. “I apologize; it’s not very comfortable. But it’s a pull-out, and it should work just fine.”

Michaela goes still. Laurel doesn’t seem to grasp his intention.

“Oh, I’m good,” she says, smiling. “We can share the bed. We’re used to it.”

Laurel opens her mouth again, and Michaela is terrified that she’s about to overelaborate like she sometimes tends to do when she’s lying and give them away immediately, but thankfully she lets it fall closed after a moment, realizes it’s in their best interests if she shuts up.  

Her father doesn’t scowl, but his countenance does betray a bit of suspicion that he masks with pleasantries, stepping aside and motioning out the door. “Really. I insist.”

She’s sure Laurel doesn’t want her to go any more than she wants her to go, but she’s not about to start a fight over this, not something so blatantly obvious, and so she nods, and Laurel follows her lead and stands, trailing after him out the door.

“Uh, all right,” she says. “Thank you. That’d be… great.”

Michaela watches them go, not wanting to spend the night alone, feeling powerless and frustrated and downright suffocated by this charade, and wonders, briefly, if her father is remembering that little seven year-old girl who had declared she wanted to have a wife instead of a husband; the innocent child who saw love as love and hadn’t yet been taught hate, been taught _unnatural_ and _sinful._

She does her best to shake the thought away, and finishes getting ready for bed by herself, lying down underneath her thin, scratchy sheets before realizing they’re too hot and promptly kicking them off, walking over to prop open the window. They may have electricity but air conditioning is an unheard of luxury in this place, and the humid Louisiana night is relentless, sweaty, hot as hell. Still, she lies down, tries to sleep, tries to force her body to comply, but she has no luck, and nothing to do but listen to the chorus of crickets and owls and frogs outside the window interspersed with the pitter pattering of the rain, and hope it lulls her to sleep.

That doesn’t work, either. Luckily, that’s right when Laurel appears in the doorway, and slides right back under the sheets with her.

Michaela jumps at first when she feels the mattress sink underneath her weight, then relaxes when she rolls over to find Laurel next to her, grinning wickedly, strands of damp, dark hair falling in her face.

“Wakey wakey,” she whispers, folding her hands underneath her cheek.

Michaela frowns – not displeased to see her, but surprised. “Hey. What’re you doing here?”

“Sneaking into bed with you, isn’t it obvious?” Laurel laughs softly. “That couch is hell. And I’d rather be in here.”

“If he sees-”

“He won’t. He’s out. I could hear him snoring all the way in the next room.” Laurel scoots closer, brushing her forehead against hers. “We’re good. I made sure.”

Michaela smiles, relaxing. “I feel like I’m a kid again, y’know.”

“Oh, so you _regularly_ had girls sneaking into your bed at night?”

“Shut up, that’s not what I mean,” she scoffs. “I don’t know. It’s just… weird, being back here. I never thought I’d come back.”

“He seems nice, your dad,” Laurel murmurs. Michaela makes a sound of disbelief.

“Yeah, well, that’s ‘cause you haven’t heard his hour-long rants about the will of God and the snares of the Devil yet. I’m surprised he didn’t bombard us with Bible quotes the second we walked through the door.”

“Maybe I can get him to like me then,” Laurel says, only half-jokingly. “I went to Catholic school all the way through high school.”

“Yeah, and look how well you turned out.” She pauses, her eyes dropping down briefly to Laurel’s lips, before she flicks them back up. “I would’ve like to see that, though.”

“Oh, I’m sure,” Laurel teases. “I had the whole getup and everything. Tiny little plaid skirt and tight sweater and knee socks.”

Michaela has to take a moment to recover from _that_ mental image. “If you’re trying to dirty talk me, it’s not going to work.”

Laurel raises an eyebrow. “Uh, that was PG compared to my dirty talk. If I was trying to dirty talk you, you’d know.”

Michaela laughs, but does it quickly, in a short little burst, before pressing her lips into back into the tight line, where they’ve stayed almost since they’d arrived. Laurel notices, and inches the tiniest bit closer – even though her body heat is almost too much to tolerate in this weather.

“What’s wrong?”

“I don’t know,” Michaela says, and it isn’t a lie, but not the full truth, either. She sighs, the sound carried up and out into the thickness of the night. “Maybe coming back here was a mistake. Revisiting… everything I was. Everything I worked so hard to get away from. I was… different, here. A different person. And I killed that girl when I left, and promised I’d never look back.”

Laurel is silent, for a moment. She rests her head on the pillow next to Michaela’s, eyes appraising her with all the tenderness in the world. “You wanna… tell me a bit about this girl?”

“You wouldn’t have liked her,” Michaela says, dismissively, but Laurel doesn’t let the matter go.

“’Course I would’ve. I like all parts of you.”

Michaela hesitates. Then, she relents, letting herself smile.

“Well, for starters, I had a horrible accent. I… played in the dirt a lot. Caught catfish with my bare hands. Sang in our little church choir…”

“Wait, wait, wait, go back to the catfish thing.” Laurel laughs. “You actually did that? _You_.”

Michaela rolls her eyes. “Yes, _me_. And I was good at it. We had a kids’ contest every year to see who could catch the most and I always won.”

“I had no idea you were the outdoorsy type.” Laurel hums, running a hand through her hair. “I’m learning all _sorts_ of new things about you.”

“I adapted to my circumstances. Let’s just say I prefer the great _in_ doors now.”

They’re silent after that – not for any real reason, just letting their conversation come to its natural close, and allowing the harmonies of the swamp creatures to wash over them in waves, lying side by side but not touching, both soaked with sweat. Somehow, by some miracle, Michaela feels herself start to drift like a ship slipping her moorings, floating out into that sea of warm blackness, that welcoming abyss. She can’t see Laurel, but the other girl is still beside her, and after a while she can only assume she’s fallen asleep, and so she peeks sideways at her, finding her face soaking in the moonlight, making her sweaty forehead glisten, lying on her side facing her with her nose tucked into the pillow. Her eyes are shut, lips parted slightly. Michaela thinks, suddenly, that she could watch her sleep for hours and never get bored – of memorizing the creases on her forehead, the curves of her lips, the steady rhythm of her breathing.

After a while, she closes her eyes too, rolling over onto her side away from her. And it’s only then that Laurel speaks up, apparently not having been asleep at all.

“I would’ve liked that girl,” she mutters, the words muffled, but too coherent to be sleep talk; too full of meaning. “I would’ve loved her too.”

 

~

 

Laurel is gone in the morning.

It’s a wise move, Michaela knows, and here a necessary one, but she can’t help the twinge of disappointment that gnaws at her belly when she rolls over to find empty, rumpled, sweat-drenched sheets, the ghost of her body lying beside her. She gets over it quickly, though, and doesn’t waste any time lingering in bed – though part of her would rather shut herself away in her room for the rest of this trip and never come out. Three days – that’s what she had agreed on with Laurel, though she’d tried to bargain for two. Or one.

Or – well, _none_ had been the most preferable option. But clearly that hadn’t worked out.

Thing is? She doesn’t regret coming, not really. She knows she’d needed closure, and maybe she can’t get it with her mother but she can still get it with her father, in whatever form it may come in – and if Michaela’s being honest, she has no idea exactly what it is she wants, or what will qualify as closure, to her.

Maybe she’ll know it when she feels it. She hopes so, anyway.

She dress: short khaki shorts, old dirty tennis shoes, and a black tank top, forgoing makeup or haircare beyond running a brush through it a few times. There’s no real point here; the humidity will destroy her hair and the sweat will destroy her makeup, and she recognizes futility when she sees it. So she makes her way outside into the living room, finding Laurel sprawled out on the old plaid pull-out couch, in a position that Michaela has no clue how she can find comfortable. The other girl seems to be out cold somehow, though, and after determining her father isn’t anywhere to be see either, she ventures outside, opening and shutting the ancient screen door as quietly as she can, to keep from disturbing Laurel.

Mornings on the bayou are fresh; cool, or at least as close to _cool_ as it can get in this place during summer. Everything looks greener; brighter, rejuvenated, the leaves and Spanish moss on the trees illuminated from behind by the sun so that their outlines shimmer gold. The still water looks almost pretty for a moment when it catches the rising sun, with stubby cypress knees jutting up out of it in places and an alligator lying in wait in a thicket of weeds and grass near the shore. It’s hard to see from a distance, camouflaged well by the water, but over the years she’d trained her eyes to spot them, wary as ever.

Apparently it’s not a skill she’s lost.

It only takes a moment for her to spot her father down by the water, clad in a plaid button-up and khaki pants. He’d always taken morning strolls around the town, she remembers; checking in on other residents, ever the consummate Reverend and faithful servant. Sucking in a breath of fresh, thick air, she makes her way down the stairs and approaches him, head held high as ever. He stops when he notices her, and smiles; an old, tired smile that make the crow’s feet near his eyes more prominent, forming deep wrinkles in his forehead. He looks so much older than he had when she’d left, black hair flecked with grey, with so many lines on his face that hadn’t been there before.

She can’t pretend it isn’t good to see him. But part of her knows she also can’t pretend it _is_.

“Well good morning,” he greets, as she starts to stroll along at his side. “You’re up early.”

Michaela nods, though she doesn’t have a clue what time it is. Time has almost no meaning here, in this tiny, isolated corner of the world.

“Uh, yeah,” is all she can think to say, eyes lowered.

“Sleep well?”

“Well enough,” she answers. “You left my room the same. I didn’t think you would.”

“Of course we would. You’re our daughter.” He stops suddenly, reaching out, cupping her cheeks in his hands and shaking his head in disbelief. “You’ve gotten so beautiful, Michaela. So different. When you talk you…”

He drifts off. She makes herself give him a smile. “Yeah, I, um, I got rid of the accent. I knew no one would ever take me seriously with it, so…”

There’s a pause, and not an overly comfortable one. Michaela can feel the distance between them, even though he’s touching her; they’ve been separated by the years, a rift growing bigger and bigger – so vast now that Michaela wonders if they can ever fill it, or if she even wants to.

“You dress nicely,” he remarks, as if searching for something to say. “You’re… well-off?”

She nods. “I worked for an old woman, while I was in college. I was her caretaker. She didn’t have any relatives, so when she died she left me everything.”

“And that girl? Your best friend?” he asks, seemingly nonthreateningly. “Laurel, isn’t that her name?”

Michaela nods, trying to calm down, quell her instinctive internal panic at the mention of her name. “Yeah. We… we met at Princeton our first year. We’ve been really close ever since. She offered to come with me, when she heard.”

“Princeton? God above,” he says, his eyes searching her face – for what, she can’t be sure. “You aren’t the daughter I raised.” Michaela goes tense; they’re disapproving words but he doesn’t sound disappointed, angry. Finally, he lets out a long sigh, features softening. “Your mother would be so proud of who you’ve become.”

A lump gathers in her throat. “Did she… Did she ask for me, before-”

He nods. “She did. I wrote to you as soon as I knew she didn’t have long. I thought she’d have more time.” He looks away, and resumes his stroll, eyes locked on some invisible, far-off object. “I thought… _we_ would have more time. But the Lord chose to call her home. I have to respect His wishes. It was His plan. And maybe… it is a blessing.” He looks over at her. “It brought you home again, after all.”

They walk for a while without saying a word. Her father breaks the silence, his words pointed but not harsh.

“It hurt us when you left. Almost killed your mother.” He halts in his tracks, turns to her, and though she’d like nothing more than to dodge this conversation she does the same. His eyes are sad, the corners of them almost seeming to droop downward. “Why did you?”

She shakes her head, mouth moving without forming words for a second, caught off guard. “I… You know why. I told you.”

And she had; she’d told him _so many_ times before she’d left. Why she was wasted in this town, why she could never be happy here, over and over, but he never would listen. Even now he just looks at her like he’d used to, unyielding, clearly seeking some kind of answer she isn’t giving him, so she caves to avoid a spat, her shoulders sagging.

“I needed to get out. I was never meant to… to waste my potential here.” She stops, meeting his eyes and feeling tears in hers, inexplicably. “I couldn’t stay in this place, daddy, you know I couldn’t.”

She doesn’t want to fight; not really. She didn’t come here for that. When she’d left she’d left on bad terms, had screamed at her parents the night before leaving, accusing them of horrible things that were mostly true, but she regrets it, now. Starting a fight is not how she wants her closure. Not like this.

_Not like this_ , Michaela reminds herself, and raises her chin, steady and fearless as ever.

Instead of chastising her, surprisingly enough, her father grins. “You always were a strong-willed child. Stubborn. Downright impossible. Why should it be any different now, hm?”

He reaches out, draws her against him, so huge that his embrace dwarfs her and swallows her right up. It’s gentle, tender; he seems far more mellow a man than he had been when she’d left – made softer by time, maybe. Worn down by the years like a rock weathered by the pulling of the tides, smoothed over, every jagged edge dulled.

“Welcome back, Michaela,” he tells her, pressing a kiss to her forehead, as if anointing her. “I’m so… so glad God has brought you home at last.”

Forgiveness. When she was a girl she remembers he would always ramble on about forgiveness, letting go of others’ trespasses against her; forgiving her betrayers, because if Jesus could do that for Judas then she could do that for anyone, no matter how grave the sin. When she was young she’d never paid much attention to his words, never forgave _or_ forget – but now, maybe, she wonders if that’s what she’d come here seeking, even if she herself hadn’t realized it.

She’d come here for forgiveness, maybe. To forgive him, be forgiven for leaving. And this feels like it may be the first step.

It feels like something. It feels like progress. 


	27. XXVII

“Let’s sneak out.”

Michaela blinks, and looks up at Laurel as the other girl sinks down onto the bed beside her, eyebrows raised. “Uh, what? And go _where_? The hot new nightclub on the bayou?”

Laurel shrugs. “Take a boat ride, I don’t know. It’s been a long day.”

“You weren’t the one who got dragged around and shown off to every single person in this place,” Michaela mutters under her breath. “I felt like an exotic pet.”

Laurel frowns, taking a closer look at her. There are lines on Michaela’s face, her eyes dull with exhaustion; it’d been a quiet Saturday in a quiet town, yet it seems even the mere act of being here seems to drain her by the hour. Laurel doesn’t have the whole story – pieces of it, sure. She’d left because she needed to get away, because her parents were bible-thumping Jesus freaks who pretty much forbade every kind of fun and regularly used varying degrees of corporal punishment – but the damage seems to run deeper than that, some unseen river inside Michaela.

It almost makes her want to laugh. Shitty families – mark that down as one more thing they’ve got in common. If they’re not soulmates by now then Laurel has no idea _what_ they are.

“If it makes you feel any better,” Laurel tells her, giving her a smile, “I do too.”

Michaela looks sideways at her, and grins back, although it’s weak, barely there at all. “I’m glad you came. I don’t think I could’ve done this alone.”

“’Course you could’ve,” Laurel chirps, then rises to stand and places her hands on her hips. She glances out the window, and finds the sun just about to start dipping below the horizon. “But the car trip would’ve been _way_ less fun. Now come on. Are we getting out of here or not?”

“And what? _Stealing_ a boat?”

“ _Borrowing_. Are you in or not? We’re gonna lose the light.”

Michaela grumbles, then grudgingly gets to her feet, following Laurel out the door as they tiptoe into the living room, just about as eager to escape this dusty, stuffy old place as she is. “Fine. But just so you know, I’m coming with you under protest.”

They creep past her father’s room, finding the Reverend Pratt knelt in prayer beside his bed, his back facing them, rosary clutched in his fist. They don’t linger, and ever so gently pry open the front door, then inch open the screen door behind it until they’ve liberated themselves, stepping out and descending the stairs. There’s no one about, most everyone hidden away in their homes, and so they scamper over to the town’s marina – or what is really a few docks with boats loosely tied up to them, which they’d spotted on the way in. Laurel takes inventory of them before selecting what she supposes is the most unobtrusive one: a small green fishing boat, with two bench seats sunken down into it and a motor that looks rusted to the point of barely functioning.  

Not the Castillo family eighty-foot yacht, by any means. But it floats, and that’s good enough.

She hops in, but Michaela stays put on the dock, arms folded, eyeing her skeptically. “Okay, when I said I used to fish, I didn’t mean I wanted to ever do it again.”

“We’re not fishing,” Laurel tells her, and reaches out, untying the knot where it’s bound to the dock fairly ungracefully, with a lot of scowling and hard, frustrated jerks. “It’s an adventure.”

Michaela still doesn’t budge. “What do you know about boats?”

“I’m a rich kid. Rich kids… know boats. Sort of.” Laurel bends down and picks up an oar, nodding at it for emphasis. “There’s nothing to know anyway; we’re just gonna row.”

Still, no move. “You’re gonna get us lost.”

“That’s why you’re on navigation duty.”

“It’ll be dark soon, Laurel – we’re not gonna be able to see.”

Laurel reaches down again, and lo and behold, locates a large, blocky yellow flashlight. She holds it up without a word, and Michaela rolls her eyes, clearly grasping at straws at this point.

“What if we hit something? Or… get stranded, or-”

Laurel remains unfazed, exaggerating her optimism as best she can – even though she knows her concerns are probably perfectly valid. “I’m a good swimmer, as long as an alligator doesn’t want me for a late night snack.”

Michaela shakes her head, but finally relents, an unwilling smile tugging at her lips. Laurel holds out her hand to help her in, and she takes it, the boat wobbling slightly when she does.

“I hate you,” she says, and Laurel just smiles wider.

“Say that with a straight face, then I’ll believe you.”

Michaela doesn’t. She doesn’t say anything, and so Laurel sets about shoving them away from the dock, then plonking down on the seat closer to the bow, grabbing her oar, and starting to row away from the shore, out into the peaceful, still waters of the bayou surrounding them, maneuvering the boat between a pair of skinny cypress trees. Once they’re out far enough to keep from disturbing the people in town, she reaches over and messes with the outboard motor resting on the stern until it comes to life with a sputtering cough.

“See?” she glances back at Michaela, triumphant. “Told you I know boats.”

“Well, you may know boats, but not this bayou,” she deadpans, and gets up, motioning for her to move aside. “Move. I’m navigating. You’ll just get us lost.”

That’s probably true, so Laurel acquiesces and switches seats with her, watching as Michaela guides them with a surprising amount of confidence across the water. It occurs to her that she must be familiar with boats, having grown up on a bayou; far more familiar than she is – which, if she’s being honest and not bluffing, is not very.

She’s been on a lot of different boats, mostly with someone else driving. Technically, that probably doesn’t count as _actual_ boating experience.

But for a couple of pampered city dwellers Laurel figures they do fairly well, and Michaela taking charge allows her to soak in her surroundings; the skyglow, all vibrant shades of gold and orange with traces of red and blue, shimmering on the water, casting long black reflections of the trees down across it, which stand watch over them like silent sentinels. The clouds are swirls in the sky, wisps, as though formed by the strokes of a paintbrush. In the distance a heron lands on a log rising up in the middle of the water, bobbing his long neck and blackened by the shadows, lit from behind by the setting sun. The patches of tall grass close to the shore bow to a gentle breeze blowing through, and their rustling mixes with the quiet churning of the motor as they inch forward, barely even moving at all until Michaela finally cuts it, stilling them in the middle of what Laurel thinks must be a lake.

This is beauty, Laurel thinks. True beauty, here, in this tiny ramshackle bayou town, tucked away in this remote corner of the world. It only makes sense to her that Michaela should come from such a beautiful place.

Beauty from beauty. Equilibrium.

“Wow,” she breathes the word out, eyes locked on the sunset-colored sky. “This is…”

“I know,” Michaela says. “I missed the sunsets. You don’t get sunsets like this, in the city.”

Michaela casts her eyes off into the distance, the ghost of a smile on her plump lips, hair frizzy from the humidity and face bare of makeup. There’s a grittiness to her look, right then; something decidedly earthy and real, a side normally buried deep behind layers of makeup and expensive designer clothes but fully visible here, and ten times as beautiful as Laurel thinks she’s ever looked before. This is the part of her she’d talked about peaking through; the swamp girl she’d assured her she wouldn’t like. But she does.

More than _like_.

And again, the thought comes to Laurel unbidden. _Dulcinea_. Her Dulcinea, glowing in the fading orange twilight. Sweetness. Thing of superhuman beauty, filling her head with all sorts of grand quixotic ideals. Making her feel stupidly brave, like she could conquer the world without as much as chipping a nail, as long as she has her by her side.

“Come here,” she says suddenly, and Michaela’s eyes snap back to her, eyebrows cinching together.

“What?”

“Come over here,” Laurel tells her again, and her grin is an unashamedly wicked one, but she forces it down into a pout. “Please?”

Michaela hesitates, then sighs, swings her legs over her bench seat, and approaches Laurel’s – but doesn’t have time to get very close before Laurel reaches out and tugs her down into her lap. She lands with a surprised _oomph_ , the boat rocking with the sudden shift of weight, and Laurel can’t help but snicker when Michaela tries to look mad, but fails and only ends up looking like a small, livid Chihuahua.

“You’re gonna tip us over,” Michaela tries to chastise, but all the wind goes out of her when Laurel leans in close, ghosting her lips across hers.

“Well,” she murmurs, eyes dancing, “I _have_ been known to rock the boat.”

Michaela opens her mouth to say something, but Laurel kisses her then, steals the words right off her tongue. They don’t need them; they’re worthless, paltry things, and they’re never enough for her to convey how she feels about her. She doesn’t even know how to say it, if there’s even any adjective in the world weighty enough to be suitable – so instead, she tells her everything she can with a kiss, and hopes, prays, that she understands.

And she does. Laurel doesn’t know how she knows, just that she does.

They’re breathless when they break apart, and Laurel can smell their kiss, the swamp, the scent of Michaela’s skin; an olfactory combination that soothes her. The world is still around them, the chirping crickets and croaking frogs and owls a crescendoing musical score to this moment, this beautiful moment, like something out of a painting that Laurel never would’ve believed could be real but _is_.

Real. And hers. And theirs. And if for some reason this is her last night, her last moments on earth, she’ll die happy, and she’ll die smiling.

But to die, be separated from her… Briefly, Laurel considers all the things that could tear them apart, all the death and blood on their hands, and lies, lies they might not be able to bury forever; lies they can anchor down as far underwater as they like but will inevitably float back up to the surface somehow. It doesn’t matter, to her. None of it. She will not lose this – ever. All the distant cosmic forces of the universe have manipulated time and aligned perfectly to put them here now, together, in this moment, and that means something. She knows Michaela in a way that feels almost biological, intrinsic, as if every cell and atom in her body was programmed to recognize her from the start, as if she knew her in a past life, and maybe she did.

Laurel doesn’t particularly subscribe to the idea of fate, or destiny, or the notion that her choices are dictated by anything other than her own free will. She’s said it before; she’ll say it again. But something must have shifted in some distant abyss, some far-off dimension, to bring them together now. There’s an unseen force out there – Laurel doesn’t know what it is, only that it exists.

Only that it exists, and it brought Michaela to her, and she owes it more than she can ever repay.

“You’re beautiful, you know,” Laurel murmurs, looking up at her, so sincere right then she feels her heart seize up inside her.

Michaela lowers her eyes, and if she blushes the darkness hides it well. “You don’t have to flatter me. I’m already your girlfriend.”

“I know. I just… wanted to tell you,” she teases, tilting her head to one side. “Y’know. So you never forget.”

They go back not long after, with only their flashlight and the moon to guide them. Somehow they find the shore, and tie the boat back up and hop out, giggling and giddy as little children. Michaela looks at her, eyes brimming with mischief, as she dares to grasp her hand in the middle of the empty path home; a silent act of rebellion against a world that won’t see, but one that Laurel knows speaks volumes nonetheless.

And she looks back, watching her, hypnotized and happy and tingling all over. Her gaze warms like the sun; the touch of her skin is electric, her laugh more beautiful than any aria could ever be. She’s happy to be here with her, immeasurably happy. Stupidly, ridiculously happy – the kind of unadulterated happiness that, after everything, she’d started to think she might never feel again.

She’s been in love, before. She knows this is what it feels like.

 

~

 

The next day is Sunday.

As such, the whole town puts on their Sunday best and files into Reverend Pratt’s little church on the bayou, perched on rather precarious stilts over the water. There’s no official denomination – Southern Baptist is probably closest, Laurel thinks, but she isn’t sure, and maybe it doesn’t have one. The congregation is small, the building even smaller; only a few rows of old wooden pews in front of an elevated platform toward the front with a podium on top of it. It’s all unadorned, unobtrusive. From the outside it barely even looks like a church, might be mistaken for some other building entirely if it weren’t for the wooden cross hanging over the door, like the one they’d seen at the house.

Fortunately, her theory about bursting into flames at church turns out to be wrong. She survives, and even enjoys the service, a little. It’s so different from the Catholic mass she’d grown up with, no solemn psalms or rehearsed scripture readings or kneeling or wine and bread they try to pretend is anything other than just plain old wine and bread. It’s lively. Loud. Michaela’s father is an animated preacher, gesticulating wildly with his hands, shouting praises to the Lord while the congregation claps and yells back in response. There’s no choir besides an old woman who hobbles up to the front to lead them in song, her voice low and raspy and soulful, carrying over the rows of pews to the back of the church and up into the rafters. Hymns about God. His salvation. His mercy.

She sits with Michaela near the back, clad in a blue sundress with no makeup, sweating in the relentless Louisiana heat but smiling nonetheless. She can tell she feels out of place, not standing to clap and cheer with the others do, even though a fat woman in a baggy grey t-shirt dress who looks like she might know her tries more than once to pull her to her feet. Finally, after about her third try, Laurel gives in and rises to her feet, and Michaela follows her lead, albeit a bit reluctantly, clapping until the song ends only half-enthusiastically.

“Now ladies and gentlemen,” the Reverend Pratt announces from his podium, motioning for them to calm themselves and take a seat after the song draws to a close. They obey, and he casts his eyes out across the sea of faces, giving them a smile that makes the corners of his eyes crinkle. “I’m sure you all know how trying the last week has been for me. God saw fit to call my Colette home to him, and I miss her every day. I knew her so long… doesn’t feel like there’s a world left for me, without her.”

He chokes up, swallowing heavily. The congregation responds with sympathetic noises. When Laurel looks sideways at Michaela, she finds her watching intently.

His tone changes, brightening. “But the Lord takes, and He gives. Our Lord gives us sinners more than we could ever deserve. Some of you… may know He’s brought my daughter home to me, at last.” Several pairs of eyes fly to where they sit. Michaela doesn’t seem to notice. “Seven years. Seven long years. There is good wherever there is bad, with our merciful God, let me tell you. I know it. I’ve suffered. We have _all_ suffered – and here we are. And here _she_ is.”

Someone cheers. A few people clap. His eyes are locked on Michaela, fixed intently on her, like he hardly notices anyone else is there.

“I’m sure you’re all familiar with the parable of the prodigal son. A father, with two sons. The one son leaves, goes off, squanders his inheritance on wine and prostitutes and all manner of depraved things. The other stays. Works faithfully, _tirelessly_. Yet when the prodigal son returns his father rejoices. The other son, the faithful son – he’s mad. Who can blame him? But the father tells him to be glad. Glad, “because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.” And so is my daughter. My Michaela.” He pauses, closing his eyes, extending a hand as if reaching for something invisible in the air before him. “My daughter was lost and she is found, and God is _good_. God is _great_! God is _merciful_.”

The church erupts in cheers, shouts of _Amen_ and _Hallelujah_. Michaela isn’t shouting. She isn’t even clapping. She’s standing still, eyes bright as her smile, looking relaxed and – dare she say it – _at home_.

The service concludes ten or so minutes later, and she and Michaela make their way out of the church, stopping along the way to speak with a few people – one of them her old teacher, who gushes over her for a quarter of an hour. She might as well be a celebrity here, her return the talk of a town that normally has nothing at all to talk about, and again, Laurel hangs back.

Wallflower. Spectator. That’s what she is here, living just on the other side of the glass of Michaela’s world but so, _so_ grateful to be immersed in it; to know a Michaela she thinks precious few others have ever gotten to see in her lifetime.

And if you’d told Laurel at the beginning of this year that one day she’d end up in a tiny bayou town in Louisiana with none other than Michaela Pratt at her side, so far south of the Mason-Dixon Line that Philadelphia feels like a dream, she would’ve called you crazy. Even now she still feels like _she’s_ a little crazy, and probably she is – but in a good way.

Yeah. A good kind of crazy.


	28. XXVIII

If there’s one thing Michaela has missed about living in the heart of Cajun country, it’s the food.

In celebration of the return of the prodigal daughter, the town hosts a crawfish boil at the church. They haul old rusty propane cookers out of a nearby house, and boil the crawfish with potatoes and onions and corn in an enormous, vat-like pot, tossing in little muslin bags with a blend of seasonings for flavor. They dump the finished product on a long newspaper-covered table outside down by the water, covering it with a pile of the little bright red crustaceans mixed in with vegetables, and one by one the residents fill their trays to the sounds of three men playing a fiddle and an accordion and a guitar, singing old Cajun folk songs in French.

Watching Laurel try to eat a crawfish for the first time is, without a doubt, the funniest thing Michaela has seen in months.

For someone Michaela had thought was an adventurous eater she looks as much a fish out of water as the ones on her plate, and glances around for a while, not touching the crawfish, just observing how the others eat them, quiet as ever and not about to ask anyone for help. Michaela pretends not to notice, but watches her out of her peripheral vision, amused, as she finally, very hesitantly, reaches for one of the crawfish, picking off the shell in what is probably the slowest, most inefficient way possible; crushing it into pieces and all but dissecting the thing with brute force for a good ten minutes before she finally liberates some of the meat inside. Finally, she raises it to her mouth and takes the tiniest bite possible, then purses her lips into a thin line, obviously less than thrilled by the taste – which, Michaela has to admit, is kind of an acquired one.

It’s only then that her father, who is seated across from Laurel at the long table, notices, and jumps in. “No, no, now that ain’t how we eat crawfish down here. Michaela, teach her. Watch and learn.”

Eating crawfish isn’t a skill she’s forgotten over the years, either, and she has the head twisted off and the meat freed in seconds, angling herself towards Laurel so she can mimic her movements. She forgoes sucking the juices out of the head, though – a choice her father protests immediately.

“Uh uh uh uh,” he chides, holding the red chitinous head up to his lips and sucking with an audible slurp. Once finished, he tosses it down on his plate with a flourish, and motions for Laurel to do the same. “ _That’s_ the way we do it. Suck those little buggers’ brains right out.”

Laurel, with a half-opened crawfish in one hand, glances over at Michaela and lowers her voice, “You don’t really eat the brain… right?”

Michaela shakes her head, chuckling under her breath, and watches as Laurel raises the head to her mouth, sucking on it and making a face almost immediately; one she doesn’t have time to mask with feigned enthusiasm like she usually does. Michaela notices, and laughs.

“It’s not for everyone,” she tells her, grinning at the sight of Laurel: in a sundress with a napkin bib tucked loosely into the front of it, hair pulled back into a ponytail, her face scrunched up in disgust. Michaela reaches over, takes a sip of her can of beer, feeling at home for the first time these past few days and falling back into the rhythm of life on the bayou almost effortlessly. “But it _is_ how we eat here.” She pauses, then adds in an afterthought, teasingly, “Oh, and whatever you do, don’t eat the dead ones.”

Laurel looks downright horrified. “I thought they were all dead.”

“They are. But tails curl under if they’re alive when you boil ‘em,” her father jumps in, voice loud and booming as ever. “Stay straight if they’re dead. That’s how you know. You don’t wanna eat the dead ones now.”

“Oh.” Laurel relaxes slightly, and stares down into the little thing’s lifeless, buggy eyes. “Um, okay. Good to know.”

Slowly but surely, Laurel works her way through her platter, seeming to get more and more used to the taste as time goes on. It makes Michaela want to laugh, to see fancy, rich girl Laurel Castillo sitting at a rickety wooden table in the middle of nowhere in a swamp, shoving crawfish in her mouth, fingers covered with sauce and spice, occasionally making little squeals of surprise now and then while prying off the shells and laughing.

It’s hilarious. And also adorable. And after a while, all Michaela can think about is how ridiculously adorable it is, how adorable _she_ is, and stops paying much attention to her own food at all.

After she finishes her tray, she snaps out of it and gets to her feet, placing it on top of a pile with other dirtied trays the next table over and heading back to the house to clean up, briefly. Once she reemerges she finds her father waiting for her at the bottom of the stairs outside, still clad in his suit from church, pacing back and forth idly and looking up when he hears the door open. It’s clear that he’s followed her – for what reason, she can’t be sure – so she makes herself give him a tight smile, descending the stairs and coming to a stop in front of him on the muddy ground.

“Hi,” she greets, and he smiles back.

“I thought we might talk. Just the two of us, before you go,” he tells her, motioning in front of him. “Shall we?”

Michaela nods, and walks along at his side for a moment in silence, the awkwardness heavy in the air, undeniable. They’ve been on relatively good terms since her arrival, sure, but the distance between them is a gap she’s not sure they’ll ever be able to bridge, and a bridge she burned ages ago that she’s not sure it’s possible to rebuild. One she’s still not sure she wants to.

“We haven’t gotten to speak much,” he starts, and sighs. “You leave tomorrow?”

She nods. “Yeah.”

“You could always stay, you know. God has called you home for a reason, Michaela – not to leave us so soon.” He glances sideways at her, lowering his voice, urging her. “You’d be happy here. No more of that… lawyer nonsense. Marry a nice boy here and settle down. Watch me grow old…”

He drifts off. Michaela frowns, shaking her head. “Daddy… You know I-”

“You can’t. I know.” He gives a rueful sort of grin. “Well, at least I can say that I tried.”

Another pause, longer this time. Briefly, Michaela wonders what it would be like if she stayed – or if she’d never left at all, let this place suck her in like quicksand, never gotten so much as a glimpse of the outside world. Things would’ve been simple, here. _She_ would’ve been simple, no blood on her hands, no body count to her name. Maybe over time she might even have been able to convince herself she was happy, settle down with a boy, become a housewife, pop out a few kids, go to church and crawfish boils every Sunday; a poor man’s version of what her life with Aiden might have been like, she thinks.

She wouldn’t have been happy. Wouldn’t have ever met a girl named Laurel Castillo, who would take her whole world in her hands and reshape it like clay, and change everything. She wouldn’t have been happy at all.

“So,” her father begins, clearing his throat. “Are you seeing anybody? Boyfriend?”

_Not exactly_. Michaela tries not to bristle.

“Not really. I was engaged for a while, to a guy named Aiden. It didn’t work out.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. But perhaps it means the Lord has someone… just around the corner for you.” They come to a stop near the tables down by the water, where residents of the town mill about, filling their trays and digging into them. He reaches out his arm, pointing to a young man laughing at the end of one of the tables, clothes tattered but smile bright. “See that boy there? Name’s Jonathan. Nice boy, good family. I could introduce you, if you like.”

Michaela scoffs. “No, I’m okay. Really.”

“I’m not trying to make you uncomfortable, now,” he says, holding up his hands. “But having a family is our divine purpose; man, woman, and child, together in love. I know having a career is important to you. But remember that a career won’t keep you warm at night.”

_But Laurel will_.

Again, she tries not to bristle, tries to ignore how suffocating his words feel. Man woman and child. _Man_. All the assumption. She’s dated guys, of course. She does like guys – for the most part, though dating them has never really turned out well for her in the past. But even just hearing that makes her feel stifled, caged, like so many times before; like she had at the bar, with the other interns, and she has to fight to keep herself from visibly squirming.

She smiles through gritted teeth, nodding. “Yeah. I will.”

They make their way back over to the tables not long after. Michaela is so relieved to escape that she could almost cry, and spots Laurel still seated at the table, but lingers on the outskirts of the party initially, listening to the strum of the guitar mix with the sweet tune of the fiddle. A small crowd of people have gathered in a circle near the trio to dance, clapping their hands in time with the music. One old woman lifts her dress ever so slightly to do a jig and the group goes wild, shouting all sorts of encouragements to her, hooting and hollering as the music picks up speed.

It’s then that Michaela makes up her mind, makes her way over to where Laurel sits, leans in from behind her, and says, “Dance with me.”

Laurel jumps, not having heard her approach, then blinks. “Huh?”

“Dance with me,” she repeats, echoing the words that feel so familiar now, like it’s the simplest thing in the world. “It’s our thing, right?”

It is. _Dance with me_ , at the club when she’d forgiven Laurel for the ring, the first time she’d started to see her in a different light – as a friend, maybe. _Dance with me_ , at the bar before their first time; such a dirty, unceremonious start to something Michaela never would’ve guessed would become so beautiful. It feels right, now. Even though she doesn’t know why.

Laurel furrows her brow, lowering her voice. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure,” she tells her, without a second’s hesitation, and she is.

Laurel still looks confused, and a bit hesitant herself, but wipes her hands, pushes out her chair, and stands nonetheless, with a smile. “Then let’s do this.”

They walk over near the crowd, at first standing near the outer ring but gradually making their way closer to the center and joining the dancers.

Laurel laughs, as Michaela tugs her forward; the sound like the chiming of bells, warming her all over. “I’m gonna look like an idiot; I’m such a bad dancer-”

“Mmm,” Michaela hums, and does a little twirl, eyes twinkling, her sundress poofing out around her. “Then at least you’re _my_ idiot.”

So they dance. It’s not finessed, or even remotely skillful, but they make it work like they always have, moving in time with the music, clapping their hands when necessary. People are watching. Maybe because she’s the infamous prodigal Michaela; maybe because they’re just a tad bit too close – but she doesn’t care. She _wants_ them to watch.

She wants them to _know_.

All it takes is one look at Laurel to know for sure. She’s all flushed cheeks and messy hair and huge, dumb smiles, her dress exposing just enough of her back and legs to tantalize, her rhythm off but her movements graceful and captivating regardless. She’s a bad dancer – horrendously bad, but it’s so charming all Michaela can do is watch, and fall in love just a little bit more with her every move. She knows it then, looking at this girl who feels so much like home, in the middle of this place she used to _call_ home. She knows what she wants. Knows, maybe, why she came here in the first place.

“Kiss me.”

She says it while still swaying, softly, to keep it from being overly obvious. But Laurel nearly stumbles when the words register in her ears, and she freezes immediately, confusion and something like fear flickering in her eyes.

“What?” she breathes, licking her lips, looking so delectable right then that Michaela can hardly stand it. “Michaela, what-”

“Kiss me,” she says again, firmer this time, again without hesitation. She’s never been more certain of anything in her life, never known she’s wanted anything more than she wants this. “Please.”

Laurel still won’t make a move. Michaela is leaning in close, closer. More people are watching.  She doesn’t care; it feels like she’s simultaneously in front of the eyes of the world and in front of no one but Laurel. She should think of the dangers. Think of the consequences. But she can’t think about anything except Laurel, the desire she feels inside her building to critical mass, uncontainable.

The rest of the world doesn’t exist. The rest of the world can go to hell – so she moves in before Laurel can say another word, placing one hand on her cheek, and kisses her.

Everything around them grinds to a halt. The chatter. The music. The dancing. A needle might as well have been lifted suddenly off a record on a turntable, skipping with that sudden _squeak_ and stopping the world on a dime. Michaela doesn’t rush the kiss. Laurel doesn’t jerk back, doesn’t even flinch, just parts her lips in invitation for more, willing to push the envelope in that very _Laurel_ way of hers, and the world takes on some hazy, warm, dream-like quality when she does. As far as Michaela is concerned they’re insulted in a little bubble of their own where time doesn’t matter, where not a hurricane or gale-force winds or _nothing_ could shake either of them, where nothing could rip them from this moment, ruin this.

Well – nothing in the world except a very livid, very _strong_ Reverend Pratt.

Without warning Michaela feels herself being tugged back, away from the warmth of Laurel’s lips, and when she glances behind herself she finds all imposing six feet six inches of her father looming over her, glowering, grasping her arm in his hand so tight she thinks it’s likely to break, and will definitely be bruised sooner rather than later. Luckily, he has the decency – if she can call it that – not to chew her out in front of the already stunned crowd, and gives her arm a sharp pull in the direction of his little house.

His voice is deeper than she’s ever heard it. Bone-chilling. “Inside. _Now_.”

She obeys – not that he gives her much choice in the matter.

The last thing she wants to go is leave Laurel to the mob alone, but thankfully they don’t seem to be tearing her limb from limb or piling on top of her; they’re just looking at her – at both of them – with sneers of disgust on their faces, their silent, hateful thoughts and low murmurs maybe just as bad as any physical blows could be. Michaela can’t say she hadn’t been expecting it – she grew up here, grew up surrounded by the same intolerance; the hatred that isn’t instinct but learned behavior, something taught, something she learned too, something that fucked her up more than she probably even realizes to this day.

She can’t say she hadn’t been expecting this but it still hurts, still stings like a lash across her back.

After being all but pulled up the stairs and into the house, her father slams the storm door behind them and advances on her, lips pressed together tight with rage, jaw clenched so tight she can see the muscles there rippling. A vein pulses unnaturally in his forehead, and if he weren’t a man of God she thinks maybe he’d up and kill her right then, right there.

But she isn’t even worried about that. _Laurel._ She’s worried about Laurel, sick with dread. She can die later but she has to know Laurel’s okay first, and she’s nowhere to be seen, maybe still outside with the crowd who may be a mob, by now; an angry mob, all torches and pitchforks.

“What in _God’s_ name was that?” he bellows, so loudly she can’t help but jump, but she doesn’t cry – no, she won’t cry in front of him, _because_ of him. “That girl’s not your friend. What is she – your… _lover_? For Christ’s sake-”

“My girlfriend,” she corrects him, raising her chin defiantly. “She’s my girlfriend. And her _name_ is Laurel.”

She should be expecting the slap, too, but when it comes it catches her off guard, jerks her head roughly to one side, a million pinpricks of pain spreading across her cheek. It knocks her hair in her face, and she brushes it aside with one hand while clutching her burning-hot cheek with the other, breathing heavily, trying not to cower – no, she _will not_ cower, she’s Michaela Pratt. Michaela Pratt does not cower for anyone.

“Do you have _any_ idea what you’re doing? Damning yourself in the eyes of God, with that twisted, wicked, _disgusting_ …” He exhales sharply, taking a step back and starting to pace, and thankfully not looking like he plans on following the slap up with another one. “I should’ve known. When you two wanted to sleep in the same bed, under _my_ roof, I should’ve known. It is an abomination.” He pauses, shaking his head. “I thought I raised you better. I-”

The creaking of the front door cuts him off, and suddenly there is Laurel, looking frazzled and frightened but unscathed. Michaela half-wants to break down at the sight of her, safe and relatively sound, but the other girl quickly deduces she’s entered the room at exactly the wrong time and makes herself scarce, rushing past them into her bedroom. Her father glares at her all the way, his eyes full of more fire than Michaela thinks any hell could ever have in it.  

“You are not the daughter I raised,” he spits. “I thank the Lord your mother is dead so she never had to live to see this – this _what_? Rebellion? Is that why you did this?”

“ _No_ ,” she shoots back, finally daring to speak up.

“Then why?” He bites out a sardonic laugh. “Because you _love_ that girl?”

“Yeah,” she says, without thinking, the words coming up and out and not feeling the least bit foreign, not even feeling particularly weighty; just feeling like words she’s been saying all along, words she _should’ve_ been saying all along. “I love her, daddy. I do.”

He’s silent, for a moment. Then, he runs his hands over his face and turns away, murmuring some prayer under his breath, and she can barely pick up the words but she understands the gist of it: to bless her, show her her _wicked ways_ , forgive her sins and set her back on the path to righteousness. It makes her blood boil, hot as lava in her veins.

“I don’t need you to bless me,” she hisses, cutting him off. He turns, just as surprised as she is by the harshness of her tone. “I don’t need to be _forgiven_. I love her. I love her, and that’s not a sin, and… and I don’t know what bible you’re reading if you think it is.”

“Good God, how do you not see what you’ve done? What you’re doing?” he demands. “How can you be so _blind_ , Michaela?”

He believes it, she realizes right then. She sees it in the pure bewilderment in his eyes, his astonishment that she doesn’t see what she’s doing wrong. He believes it. Believes it’s a sin, without a doubt; so strongly she knows there’s no way to ever make him _un_ -believe it. And Michaela recognizes futility when she sees it, and this is a losing battle no matter what she says to him now, no matter how much she begs him to understand.

She doesn’t want to beg him to understand. She _won’t_.

She lowers her voice, softening her tone. “I love her. The things we’ve been through together… I can’t tell you what they are. But I love her, after everything, I know I do.” She pauses, sorrow rushing into her inexplicably. “How can _you_ be so blind?”

A beat. It may just be a trick of the light, but she thinks she sees her father’s face soften – before it hardens just as quickly again, eyes like steel, jaw set, feet planted firmly on the ground like a statue, just as unmoving and unmalleable as his mind.

“Get out,” is all he says, brief and terse. “You are not my daughter anymore. You never were.” He stops, then meets her eyes, not yelling but speaking firmly and making it clear there’s no room for protest, even if she wanted it. “Go. Pack your things and take that girl and go.”

She turns, taking a few steps toward her bedroom door, before she turns, suddenly, and looks back at him, chin raised, shoulders squared, steady as a bolder. When she speaks she speaks loud, clear, emphasizing every word, not leaving him enough time to cut her off.

“You’re right,” she says. “I’m not the daughter you raised. Not that… scared little girl. I’m stronger. Better. I’m smarter.” She stops, swallowing thickly. “I know who I am. And I _love_ who I am. I fought for that, y’know.” She sucks in a breath to steady herself. “I’ve fought to get here now. I’ve fought my whole life, for everything I’ve ever gotten. And I’m finally happy. So happy. You have no _idea_ how hard I had to fight for that too.”

She leaves him with those words, and turns, stalking off into the bedroom and closing the door behind her.

Michaela finds Laurel seated on the bed, watching her carefully, the corners of her eyelids drooping down with sadness. She doesn’t go to her, though, nor does she run into her arms; instead, she chokes down her tears and makes a beeline for her suitcase, cramming her clothes into it as fast as humanly possible, knowing only that she has to escape, _get out_ of this place that feels like it’s squeezing the air out of her lungs every second she stays.

Laurel rises to her feet, giving her a worried look. “Michaela…”

“I shouldn’t have come here,” she says with a sniff, not looking up as she shoves a t-shirt into her suitcase. “This was a mistake.”

“So… are we-”

“Leaving,” Michaela tells her, looking up briefly. “We’re leaving. Pack your stuff.”

Laurel doesn’t say another word, though Michaela can tell she wants to. She does as she says, and tosses her duffle bag up onto the bed, not bothering to fold her clothes or organize them in any way. It isn’t long before they’ve both finished, and Michaela steels herself to reemerge into the living room, face her father. He’s standing in the little kitchen when they do, and Michaela meets his eyes for a second, stopping briefly in her tracks, fearless – so different from the little swamp girl he’d raised, tried to put the fear of God into. She’d shed that skin ages ago. Killed that child, and buried her deep, and risen again, stronger and better.

Michaela realizes, then, that she didn’t come here for his forgiveness, or to forgive him. She doesn’t give a damn about that, never did. She came here to show him who she is; the woman she’s become – and the woman she loves, standing by her side. She came here to accept herself and she has, she _has_ , finally, and it makes her want to jump for joy, her heart free as a bird – because even if he doesn’t love her, _she_ loves herself, and Laurel loves her, and that’s so much more than enough.

She doesn’t linger. She just gives him that look, and then makes her way over to the door with Laurel hot on her heels, who is avoiding eye contact with the man at all costs. The crowd outside, thankfully, has dispersed, and they avoid any confrontation as they hurry over to the little gravel path, the entrance to town, past the old rusty welcoming sign in the clearing.

They step into the car and sit in silence for a moment without starting the engine, before Laurel reaches over to take her hand and asks quietly, “You okay?”

“Yeah,” she says with a smile – a real smile. “I’m okay.” She lowers her eyes. “That was why I came here. To show him who I am, even after… he tried so hard to make me into something else. Make me think who I am is a sin, and wrong… I _wanted_ to do that.” Michaela shakes her head, laughing softly at how surreal it all feels. “How stupid was that, right?”

“That’s not stupid.” Laurel grins, squeezes her hand ever so slightly. “It was brave.”

“You think so?”

“’Course.” Her grin widens, exposing her teeth. “Well… a little stupid. But mostly brave. Now, you wanna get out of here or not?”

Michaela nods, and smiles back, and she does. And they do. She starts the car and drives it down the little gravel road through the swamp, away from the town, away from it all, until the little clearing in the distance fades from the rearview mirror; only a distant memory. She doesn’t look back. The thought never even crosses her mind. She looks sideways at Laurel instead, looks forward, out into a world wide open with possibilities and promise – toward the future, toward the girl that _is_ her future.

Her future. Her everything. So Michaela Pratt leaves the bayou behind once and for all, that day. And she doesn’t so much as give it a single backward glance.    


	29. XXIX

Laurel almost sheds actual tears of joy when she sets foot inside Michaela’s air-conditioned apartment again.

“Oh my God,” she half-groans, setting down her duffle bag by the door with a low _clunk_ , letting the cool air wash over her, and stretching out her arms. “It’s a miracle.”

“Ah yes,” Michaela remarks much less enthusiastically, stepping inside after her. “The amenities of civilization.” She drops her suitcase too, and lets out a breath that she may as well have been holding in the entire car trip, sagging like Atlas with the weight of the world on his shoulders. “Thank God we’re home.”

Laurel grins, a tiny, drowsy grin, and strolls over to her, leaning in, pecking her on the lips, then circling her arms around her and holding her tight without a word, rocking them gently from side to side. _Thank God we’re home_ , she’d said, and to Laurel this feels like home, too; not this place, these four walls, temporary and insignificant thing that it is, or this city – but her arms. Her body.

_Her_.

After everything that’s happened here, all the death and horror, Laurel never would’ve believed she’d find a home here, in a place only a few months ago she’d wanted to run as far away from as humanly possible. Now she can’t picture herself anywhere else in the world, and if there’s a storm coming they’ll weather it, because Michaela is a fighter and so is she – and they’ll make it. They will.

She doesn’t fancy herself clairvoyant, or anything. But somehow she knows.

Michaela breaks away after a short while and sighs. “I’m gonna go take a shower. I need to wash that place off me.”

Laurel hums in agreement but doesn’t ask to join her; it’s almost midnight, and her eyelids are drooping with exhaustion, the hours on the road weighing on her. Somehow, by some miracle, she manages to muster up the strength to haul her bag into the bedroom and unpack her clothes into the dresser drawer Michaela had allocated for her things, not bothering to fold half of them. She’s disgusting, sweaty, with what feels like a layer of grime from that place clinging to her skin, and if she were less tired she’d probably care enough to be unsettled by it, but she doesn’t. Instead she just lets down her hair, plops down onto the bed, and listens to the hissing of the water as Michaela showers on the other side of the bathroom door. Minutes pass, all blurring into each other, their beginnings and endings barely distinguishable in her state.

Then, finally, Michaela emerges. As soon as she does, Laurel snaps wide awake.

She’s squeaky clean, clad only in a puffy white towel, her hair dry and hanging loose around her shoulders. She treads on the carpet delicately, like a goddess walking on earth, the steam trailing after her like mist – if she didn’t already look mythical enough. And Laurel weren’t already irreversibly head over heels for her she’d fall in love all over again, in that instant.

Briefly, Michaela’s words come back to her, the ones she’d overheard between her and her father the day they’d left – _I love her. The things we’ve been through together… I can’t tell you what they are. But I love her, after everything, I know I do._ She hadn’t mentioned them the whole ride back, hadn’t wanted to press, throw salt in a wound that was still raw and fresh and bloody, and probably still is just as much now. She knows she feels the same. Has since before she heard her say that – long before.

She also knows there’s no possible way to rationalize falling in love so hard so fast. Laurel guesses the only thing left for her to do now is give in, and accept how completely screwed she is. 

She realizes she’s staring the same time Michaela does, and the other girl furrows her brow, but smiles. “What?”

“Nothing,” Laurel murmurs, lying on her side, head against the pillow, eyes drinking her in lazily. She feels fuzzy and jittery all over, tied into knots. Delightfully insane.

Michaela shakes her head and goes for her dresser drawer, rooting through it. “Stop.”

Laurel gives her a cheeky grin. “Stop what?”

“ _Ogling_ me,” she says, turning around with a t-shirt in her hand and quirking an eyebrow.

“Can you blame me?” Laurel undertones, voice soft like a song. She rubs her lips together, considering something. “C’mere.”

Michaela rolls her eyes but complies, feigning reluctance, dropping the t-shirt, and coming to a stop next to where she lays. Laurel raises herself to a sitting position, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, eyes half-lidded, bathing in her gaze like sunlight, a buzz reverberating in her skull and slowly spreading down throughout her body. A low, sweet ache settles under her breastbone.

“What?” Michaela asks, smiling down at her.

Laurel flicks her eyes up to meet hers, a smirk tugging at her lips. “Nothing.”

Slowly, very, very slowly, Laurel reaches a hand out, around her back, and pulls at the towel until it separates, parting in the back and then falling forward in the front, leaving her nude. Michaela just stands there, arms at her sides, flushing slightly. Surprisingly she doesn’t protest – like she knows just what she’s doing to her by doing nothing at all, like she knows how hypnotizing and enticing she is. And she is, _God_ she is.

The light of the room is dim but she creates her own somehow, shining bright and clear. Laurel stares unabashed, at the luxurious, flowing curves of her hips, her ass, her thighs and the smooth mound settled between them, her skin, supple and impossibly soft, something she could lose herself in so easily. Her breasts – full, sweet, just as beautiful; works of art, peaked with dark nipples which are hard as pebbles in the cool air. Her hair is frizzy, framing her face, around the perfect crescent of her lips that begs to be kissed, and those eyes, those _eyes_ that could persuade her to do anything in the world, get her to cross into Hell and back at the drop of a hat. She looks like a sculpture. Like she ought to be an artist’s muse, painted and written about and carved into marble. A temptress. Siren.

_Screwed_ , Laurel thinks again, and leans forward to brush her lips just above her belly button, peppering her stomach with wet, languid kisses against her warm skin. She’s wrapped around her finger, so _screwed_ , and in the best way possible – because she’s too far gone to care how screwed she is.

Screwed. So gone. In over her head so far that breathing no longer has much meaning at all.

Michaela tenses, then relaxes and laughs softly, the sound morphing into a squeal. “That tickles.”

“Come here,” she entreats again, taking her hand, urging her forward. There’s mischief in her eyes but it’s subdued, and her touch is lustful but tender. “Tell me… if this does?”

Michaela does, lowering herself onto her lap, and within seconds Laurel has flipped them around, laid her down on the bed back against the pillows, and clambered atop her, too eager to be very graceful. She’s still fully clothed while Michaela is as naked as the day she was born, and it strikes her as a bit unfair, and so she makes off with her blouse and bra, abandoning her quest to remove her slacks in favor of Michaela’s lips. She tastes like sleep, like the shitty rest area vending machine coffee they’d both guzzled down during the drive back, and like that blend of other flavors that is so distinctly, uniquely Michaela, as distinctive as any fruit or sweet.

She lays her out. Spreads her wide. Bares every inch of her and puts her on display. She’s never more beautiful than when she’s like this, Laurel thinks. Never more of a cruel and merciful goddess.

She breaks away after a little while, kissing a trail lower and lower, pausing at the mounds of her breasts to suck at them and reveling in the quiet, high-pitched gasps from above, the way Michaela’s body rises off the bed toward her mouth. She stops again at her stomach, and lets her lips flutter there until she’s giggling helplessly and kicking gently with her legs, more of a reflex than an effort to actually get her to stop. She presses a brief kiss to her belly button, meeting her eyes and winking, then abandons her efforts and seeks out another hole entirely.

Laurel all but prostrates herself before her at the end of the bed, urging her thighs apart, splaying them as wide as they can go until she’s so deliciously open and ready, and Laurel can see her glistening, can see her clit standing out large and dark, her folds just below a velvet curtain, sloppy with wetness and burning hot as a blast furnace. She can hear her begging too, though it’s like an echo in the distance – not music to her ears, not something she’ll listen to and urge on, not like it normally is. She’s so intensely focused right then, eyes trained laser-precise on her, every sense honed in, that she barely even notices.

When Laurel starts, she works her slow.

She spreads her wide and licks her, one long movement with the flat of her tongue from the base of her pussy up to her clit; not designed her get her off, per se, but more to explore her – even though she’s done plenty of exploring already, and knows where to touch and lick and suck to have her undone in minutes. Laurel holds off on that, though. She doesn’t want to rush this, make it all a flurry of tongue and fingers and moaning, fumbling towards a quick come like they had the first time in that bathroom.

She wants to treasure this. Wants to make it _last_. After this weekend Laurel thinks they both deserve that.

She puts the thought out of her mind, banishes it. Michaela’s moans and mewls float back into her consciousness, then fade out just as fast, sloshing back and forth, as if pulled by some invisible tide. The taste of her cunt is just as good as her other set of lips, and she tongues past her labia and pushes inside, in search of that rich tangy sweetness, fresh and delectably clean from her shower. She laps her up. Drinks her down. _Consumes_ her, and she doesn’t mind, not even a little. She could do this for hours, make her come until she can’t move, until she blabbers and blubbers, and it’d be just as rewarding as coming herself – if not more.

She’s always preferred giving. She’s generous that way, and after everything Michaela deserves generosity. She deserves the world. She’ll give it to her.

She doesn’t care if it’s not possible. She will give Michaela the world because she deserves nothing less – but in the meantime, she’ll have to settle for just giving her _this._

“Laurel… Laurel, oh, God… Faster, _faster_ , fuck…”

Normally she would obey, play her body just right, use her fingers or suck at her clit with the end goal of making her come, but she doesn’t do either of those things. Not yet, at least. She stops for a moment instead, reaching up her hand and smoothing it across her folds, up and down, almost petting her, then makes a dramatic show of wiping off her mouth, coated in her slick as she is. She relishes in this – in the build, the slow crescendo of her cries as the pleasure mounts and tightens and coils between Michaela’s legs like a knot. If she wants, Laurel thinks, she could do this for hours without ever making her come, always keep her teetering just right on the edge, until she’s pleading and weeping and squirming with restraint. Michaela doesn’t come exceptionally easily, never has – but Laurel knows that isn’t unusual. It takes a certain degree of mastery to bring her off. Takes getting every touch and lick and bit of pressure perfectly in sync for the perfect length of time, like a conductor tuning an orchestra.

She _is_ high-maintenance; ever the hothouse flower, the fussy _princesa_.

Laurel is, as always, more than happy to maintain her.

“I’m-” A low, rough groan cuts Michaela off, and Laurel pauses to glance up at her, hair fanned out on the pillow like a dark halo, eyes shut, mouth agape. Erotic. Shameless. Beautiful. “I’m gonna… Laurel, _ah_ -”

Laurel moans against her, making sure she can feel the rumbling of the vibrations on her clit, and she responds by reaching down, grasping her hair, greedy for more. It never hurts, though – not the way Michaela does it. Michaela’s grasp on her hair is insistent but tender, and now and then she can feel her stroking it, fingers combing through the strands, making her shudder. She’s getting closer. Laurel doesn’t know how long it’s been – an hour, or mere minutes. Maybe it’s been a century or maybe it’s been seconds, but Michaela’s thighs are quivering, her whole body going loose with pleasure before that inevitable crunching and contracting and tightening. Her cries are sobs. Wails. She secretly hopes the walls are thin, that the neighbors can hear. It’s that streak of exhibitionism in her; a bad habit she can’t seem to shake.

Laurel gets her close. Agonizingly so; so close that’s speaking in tongues, a million words that have no meaning. So close it’s cruel.

Then, she stops.

She yanks herself away, though it’s a challenge to do so, because her mouth feels like it may as well have been suctioned to her, super-glued. Her juices have spilled down her jaw, wetted the tip of her nose, run down towards Michaela’s ass and dampened the sheets. It’s dirty, and filthy. Debauchery. Delicious, holy debauchery, doing this to her. She knows it’s cruel to stop, and Michaela moans a low, desperate, bewildered _What?_ when she does, and she looks so much like hers right then, legs spread, moaning, hips bucking in all directions, searching for her mouth. So _hers_ it’s undeniable, and unfathomable she lived so long without having this.

It’s cruel, to stop like this. And Laurel can’t stand to be cruel to her – ever.

So in a split second, she’s rearranged them into a decidedly more intimate position. She sits down cross-legged, and urges the boneless Michaela to sit up, settle herself into her lap and placing her legs on either side of her, so that they’re face to face, foreheads and bodies pressed so close they may as well be one person instead of two. Their ragged panting fills the room. Laurel’s heart seizes up, seeing Michaela like this, from this new angle. A myriad of different noises pass through her lips: whimpers, short moans, gasps, occasional pleas. Her hips rock, impatient as ever.

She wants to see her face. Wants to watch her. She wants to make love to her, and that’s cheesy, like something out of a frilly, cringe-worthy Harlequin romance novel, and it’s not like her, not like her to want much more than just to flat-out _fuck._ Somewhere along the line it became hard for her form actual, real emotional bonds with people. Somewhere along the line she stopped feeling things as deeply, and it’s like she’s been plunged back into that pit of emotional chaos right then, but with Michaela it doesn’t feel like chaos.

It feels like touching down, coming home. Feels like love. Peace.

“Look at me,” she breathes, and slips two fingers inside her, eliciting a moan. She hasn’t said much this entire time, and her voice is airy, thin. She kisses her, lets Michaela taste herself, and when she doesn’t open her eyes she tucks a strand of hair behind her ear, and repeats, “Hey. Look at me.”

Finally, she does, and her eyes are barely slits, her eyebrows knitted together. She curls an arm around her and delves her hips down onto her fingers, whining. “Laurel… make me come, please… God-”

“Slow,” is all she says, breathing the word out across her lips and letting it settle on them. “Look at me. Go slow.” _I wanna watch you. Look at me, please. Look at me._

Michaela clearly doesn’t agree. She jerks down onto her fingers again, her movements harsh and forceful and erratic; she’s crossed over that line into that almost infantile state of mind where all rational thought goes to die, all ability to listen to reason and all ability to _care_ about listening to reason. It takes a few minutes of drawing back, and cooing to her, to get her to slow her pace, calm down.

Michaela doesn’t like waiting. She most definitely is not a fan of delayed gratification, in any aspect of her life. Laurel knows this. She _also_ knows how much more amazing going slow will feel – for her. For them both.

Making love. Slow. Sweet. That’s what she wants.

She’s wet. Dripping, thighs sticky. She has been since they started, but Laurel barely even feels it by now, fixated on Michaela as she is. The other girl moves atop her, pace unhurried but still frantic, and Laurel lets her ride her fingers, toys with the nub of her clit, uses the new position to take advance of access to her breasts. She closes her mouth around her left nipple and latches on, and smoothes her free hand down her leg then places it on her ass, anchoring them together.

Laurel knows she’s done this, before. Many times. Men. Women. But this feels like the first time all over again; all new and blissfully unfamiliar. It takes her a while to get Michaela to look at her, but when their eyes finally meet it’s like something shifts into place, locks, and after that neither of them look away. Her cries escalate, cross over into that fluttery upper register, rise in volume, and her pants transform into barely intelligible words, _God, I’m close, I’m so close,_ _LaurelLaurelGod_ – as if Laurel needs to be told. Laurel nuzzles at her jaw, pumps her fingers in and out steadily, lazily, and works her clit and watches her, hypnotized.

She’s beautiful. It’s redundant, Laurel knows. She can’t help but keep thinking it. She feels dizzy. She feels like she can’t breathe.

All at once, without much warning, Michaela’s rhythm breaks atop her. She comes with a sound like a sob, pussy clenching, spasms wracking her body, muscles tightening up, and Laurel thinks she can see tears glistening on her cheeks – and the sound mingles with a choked laugh, out of nowhere. Her eyelids flutter shut, and she looks so downright giddy that Laurel can’t help but laugh with her, and kiss her, and pull her fingers out to stroke lightly across her clit as she comes down.

She’s perfect. More than perfect. Something she’s never seen and will never see again.

“You okay?” she murmurs once Michaela opens her eyes again, brushing her hair out of her face and placing a line of kisses along her jawline.

Michaela hums, head lolling to one side and hair tumbling along with it. “Mmm.”

That’s not a clear answer, but Laurel knows it means _Yes_. They kiss again for a while, sleepy, lazy kisses full of languor and warmth. And Laurel grew up with millions, with all the money she could ever want, all over the world in private jets, surrounded by Rolexes and diamonds and caviar and just about every kind of opulence possible.

And she’s never known decadence like this girl. Not even close.

They’re silent for a while. Michaela doesn’t budge, still nestled comfortably in her lap, face to face. Laurel lets out a breath and looks up at her, rubbing her lips together anxiously – because suddenly that familiar feeling, that sweet, agonizing ache, comes bubbling up in her chest, uncontainable, like she’s about to burst with it, like she’ll die if she spends another second without saying it out loud.

“I love you, you know.”

The words feel easy, natural, like she’s been saying them all along. She doesn’t flinch or lower her eyes; Laurel looks at her, chin raised, the words heavy with confidence and meaning, and at the same time they feel like they have no weight at all. Michaela blinks. Once. Twice. She casts her eyes downward, not looking particularly startled but looking unsure, not knowing what to do next.

“I…” she drifts off, swallowing thickly. “Laurel, I-”

“You don’t have to say it back,” Laurel says, voice like a whisper. She gives her a weak little smile, placing a hand on her arm and smoothing it up and down. “I just… wanted to tell you. That’s all.”

Understanding flickers in her eyes. “You heard me, before?”

Laurel nods. “Yeah.”

A moment passes. The air is heavy. The darkness is silent, the room still but for the rising and falling of their bare chests. Laurel waits for her to speak first, surrenders her own free will, gives Michaela the power right then to break her heart into a million pieces if she so desires. Tell her she doesn’t feel the same. Tell her she can’t be like this with anyone, after Caleb and Levi and Aiden – even though those names are empty to Laurel now, and she suspects they’re empty to Michaela, too.

She has given her everything. The ball is in her court, the move hers to take – and she doesn’t wait long to take it.

“I meant that. _Mean_ that,” Michaela tells her suddenly, and moves her eyes up to look at her like they’re the heaviest weights in the world. She nods, breathless. “I love you too.”

A laugh escapes Laurel before she can hold it in, and it’s a joyous, not particularly attractive burst, and the thing is she doesn’t even care, right then. She pulls her close, crushes her lips against Michaela’s, hands in her hair. Her mind goes quiet on the inside suddenly, all the chaos and fear dying down to a low, resonating hum. Michaela has always had that effect on her, that ability to control her universe. She thinks she may be crying. She isn’t sure.

All she knows is that she laughs again against her lips, and pulls back briefly, raising a skeptical eyebrow. “Are you sure? I mean, you _do_ have a habit of saying ‘I love you’ post-coital and all.”

Michaela tries to glower, but fails. “I hate you.”

“Yeah, well. I love you.”

She tries to glower, again – but again she fails, and again there’s that smile, peeking through like the sun before it takes control and folds out all across her face. Until she’s so bright she’s blinding, even in this dark little room, even after all the horror they’ve seen and the death they’ve wrought. Before they’d been bound together only by death, and now it’s different. Now it’s love. Now it’s real, and not out of survival – though in a way it does feel like survival, but a different kind. Like Laurel _needs her_ to survive.

Like Laurel thinks she would legitimately die if she ever lost this.

“Fine. I love you,” she says, pretends it’s grudging though Laurel can see right through the charade.

So she kisses her again, kisses her breathless and kisses her silent, and says it again, and again, and again, like she’s a child once more and those are the only words she knows, the only prayer she’s ever said that means anything.

“I love you too.”

 

~

 

Summer draws to a close.

August rides in on the coattails of July. Gold and green fade to warmer hues of red and orange. The halcyon summer days grow shorter; the pleasant haze over the city dissipates like a cloud. To Laurel the season had felt like one long lucid dream; a kind of fool’s paradise.

Michaela was the song of her summer. Sometimes Laurel had wondered if it was all too good to be true, if she’d blink one morning and she would be gone – but she stays as autumn creeps in, slow but sure. And Michaela may be too good to be true, but somehow, by some miracle, she _is_ true.

True. And happy, and real, and everything she’s ever wanted and more. They spend their summer in a fool’s paradise and maybe they are fools, stupid, stupid fools, to believe they can insulate themselves in their own little pocket of time and space away from reality. All the death and lies and darkness feel like they exist in another galaxy, some distant time with people who aren’t them; doppelgangers in an alternate dimension, evil shadows. They live in a sort of happy delusion, stomping down that darkness inside them, but even if it’s delusion it feels perfect to her.

Bliss. Heaven on earth. Pax Romana.

Perfect. Until the day Frank Delfino comes walking back into her life.


	30. XXX

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow we're at the end!!! This fic has been one hell of a journey, and I'm so grateful to everyone who has stuck with it and left me so many wonderful comments/kudos. This was a labor of love, and it's been a joy to share it with you all. I'm planning on trying to come up with another lil somethin something for Lauraela soon, and I've got a couple ideas floating around I just need to find the time to write. SO. Stick with me. This definitely won't be the last thing I write for these two idiots ;P
> 
> Thanks so much again, and on we go (for the last time)...

It’s a lazy Sunday afternoon when it happens.

They’re over at Laurel’s place, cuddled together on the couch watching that corny, mildly horrifying old Lifetime movie about a bunch of teenage girls who make a pact to simultaneously get themselves knocked up to play a messed-up, real-life, underage version of house – which, for some reason, they’ve decided is a sound idea. Michaela’s seen it before – sue her, she’s a bit of a Lifetime movie junkie – but Laurel never has, and every time she glances up at her from her spot resting her head on her legs, Laurel’s eyes are wide, her upper lip curled into a disgusted sneer.

“Oh my God, why?” she mutters halfway through, running her hands over her face. “Oh my _God_ , this is the worst idea of worst ideas. Like, colossally bad.”

Michaela snorts. “That’s kind of the point.”

“You know,” Laurel remarks, “ _this_ … just further reinforces my decision to never have kids. Ever.”

At that, Michaela glances up at her, curious. “Never?”

“Yup,” she says, popping the ‘P’, then reaching down and playing idly with a strand of Michaela’s hair. “My parents have been pushing me to settle down, succumb to heteronormativity, and pop out a few kids pretty much since I finished undergrad. And I don’t like kids – and, besides, I don’t think I have a maternal bone in my body.”

Michaela considers the fact she may be right. Laurel had played murderous mother hen to their little group, sure – but out of necessity, to survive, not because of any real desire to do so.

“What about you?” she asks suddenly, drawing Michaela out of her thoughts. She plays the question off casually, but Michaela can tell it has a bit of weight to it. “Kids or no?”

“ _One_ kid,” she answers. “Under the supervision of a nanny.”

Laurel looks surprised. “Really?”

“Yeah, what?”

“Nothing,” she says with a shrug, a bit teasingly. “I just… can’t believe _Michaela Pratt_ would sacrifice her figure for a tiny, screaming, pooping life-ruiner.” 

“You’re cynical,” she scoffs, as a girl on screen holds up a positive pregnancy test and smiles like a lunatic. “I like kids.” Laurel gives her a pointed Look. Michaela sighs. “Most of the time. When they aren't… screeching like the apocalypse is upon us.”

“Mmm. Better marry rich then,” Laurel jokes, though it’s clear what she’s implying. “Y’know. So you can afford that nanny.”

“ _I_ intend to make my own fortune, thank you very much,” Michaela says, then looks up at her, eyes softening. “But if for some reason that doesn’t work out I’ll let you know.”

Laurel gives her another look as if to say _You better_ , and for a while they turn they attention back to the television, watching the four baby-crazed sixteen year-olds make a string of poor life decisions that possibly rival their own – though Michaela figures you probably can’t equate getting pregnant to helping kill people. Shaking the thought away, she maneuvers her head up onto Laurel’s lap, and Laurel props her feet up on the coffee table, and for a moment Michaela just savors the normalcy, the boredom; after everything things like this, spending quiet afternoons with Laurel doing nothing and wasting time, still feel miraculous. Surreal.

A knock on the door, three sharp raps quick in succession, bursts that bubble very effectively.

Michaela frowns at the unwelcome intrusion of the outside world, but Laurel doesn’t seem to think much of it. She hits pause on the movie without a word and squirms out from under her with a sigh, leaving Michaela’s head to drop down onto the couch, and crosses the room, pulling the door open without bothering to look through the peephole first.

Silence, for a moment.

Then-

“Frank?”

One word. One name. One measly syllable – breathlessly spoken, barely a whisper passing through Laurel’s lips, but Michaela’s world goes to pieces when she hears it like it’s the most devastating sound in the world, piercing as a gunshot, as the sickening _crack_ of the trophy into Sam Keating’s skull. Everything around her suddenly looks like some sort of expressionist painting, all blurred, too-bright colors and wavy lines and distorted shapes – and the only clear thing she can see when she turns her head is Frank fucking Delfino, standing in Laurel’s doorway like some sort of apparition

Repentant. Michaela thinks that’s the only word to describe him. Bright blue eyes oozing remorse, shoulders sagged, clad in a plain black t-shirt and dark wash jeans; more plain than she’s ever seen him. The prodigal Frank, back from what might as well have been the dead, as far as Michaela is concerned. Ghost. That’s what he is. He’s a ghost, he was dead and gone, and he’s _back_. Her gut roils with nausea as she rises to stand, creeping over to the door and coming to a stop behind Laurel, who is still as a statue, must be ten times as shaken as she is.

“Hey,” is all he says to greet her, mustering up one of those lopsided, cocky smirks that fills Michaela’s veins with magma – to think of what he did, the monster that he is; a monster that should never be allowed to look so handsome and harmless and contrite.

But Michaela knows the worst kinds of monsters are the ones that don’t look like monsters at all. The wolves in sheep’s clothing.

Finally, Laurel finds her voice, and it’s soft but it’s firm, with a frigid, cautious edge to it. “What… what’re you doing here?”

Frank swallows, flicking his eyes over to Michaela, seeming a bit bewildered by her presence, but ultimately settling them back on Laurel. “Can I come in? To talk?” Again, he looks to Michaela, shifts a bit awkwardly. “Alone?”

Laurel raises her chin, fearless, and it makes Michaela so irrationally happy to see her like that, facing down Frank with the strength of ten armies contained beneath her skin. Her jaw is set, eyes sharp enough to cut, and she’s in her lazy Sunday sweats but she might as well be suited in armor.

“Whatever you have to say to me you can say in front of her,” she tells him, finally. For a second she looks like she’s about to slam the door in his face and forget the matter entirely, before she steps aside and exhales sharply. “Get in.”

Frank does. Laurel closes the door behind him. Michaela hangs back behind her, not knowing what to do, if she should leave them alone or stay by her side, and concludes that she’ll do whatever Laurel wants, whatever she thinks will keep her safe. The air is thick with tension, so full of weight she can feel it on her chest, constricting her lungs.

For a moment, in the stillness, Michaela takes a good look at Frank. His hair is slicked back like usual, but his beard is bushier, the tiniest bit unkempt. He looks tired, eyes a bit bloodshot; something about him is off, weakened, worn down, and she can’t tell exactly what and doesn’t care, because in that instant she wants nothing more than to go to him, claw at him, scream about Lila and Sam and all of it. For starting this – for setting in motion the events that would eventually fuck up all their lives beyond repair.

It was all _him_. The blood on her hands. Her brain boils inside her skull – him and Annalise. She clenches her fists at her sides, almost subconsciously, as she watches Frank shove his hands into his pockets, eyes flitting from Laurel to her then back to Laurel again, where they settle. He’s looking at Laurel so tenderly, with all the love in the world, and suddenly there’s jealousy mixing with that rage in Michaela’s stomach. Possessiveness. She doesn’t want anyone looking at Laurel like that – least of all Frank.

_Especially_ not him. He doesn’t deserve her and he doesn’t deserve to so much as lay eyes on her, and she has to bite her tongue to keep from telling him that, in no uncertain terms.

“What do you want?” Laurel demands again, sharper this time, and folds her arms.

Again, Frank looks to Michaela. “Look… Prom Queen, this ain’t a good time-”

“She’s not going anywhere,” Laurel cuts him off, glancing back at her. “Stay.” She pauses, meets her eyes. “Please.”

_Stay. Please._ Of course she does – it’d impossible for her to deny Laurel anything when she asks her with those wide, terrified eyes, that sincerity and supplication in her voice. Michaela is fairly certain Frank would never hurt Laurel, but he’s far too unpredictable for her to be sure, and she’d sooner die than see her pained, hurt – by words or blows or whatever other kinds of violence Frank has in his arsenal.

So she stays. She plants herself on the ground like a tree with fifty foot roots, not so much as budging. Come hell or high water – and she thinks both hell _and_ high water may have just come, breaching the levee of their little fool’s paradise.

“Laurel…” he drifts off, letting out a breath. “Look, I know you don’t wanna talk to me, or see me, or nothin’. I know… this is just me, showin’ up outta nowhere after months. But I wanna talk. Hear me out.” He pauses, pressing his lips into a line. Something like charm glistens in those blue eyes of his – but it isn’t charm, she realizes. It’s sorrow. Designed to make _her_ pity _him_ , feel like _she’s_ done something wrong, that she’d be cruel now to turn him away, and she can tell Laurel is wavering, and _God_ , she hates him infinitely more for that, for playing to her sympathetic heart. “Please.”

A pause.

Laurel’s back is turned to her and Michaela can’t see her face, but finally she deflates like a balloon, all the air rushing out of her and spins around to face Michaela briefly, eyes begging for her to rescue her while something else tries to beat down the expression, something telling Michaela that _she’s fine, she’s got this, really_. And she does – Michaela knows she’ll be fine either way, though when Laurel nods subtly toward the door, the magma in her veins hardens and crystallizes into ice.

She thinks about insisting on staying, but she can’t bring herself to go against Laurel’s wishes, and so she nods back, rubbing her lips together and retreating down the hall into the bedroom, where she stands for a long moment, not knowing what to do with herself when a serpent has come knocking on their door, and that serpent is right out in the living room with Laurel in his slimy grasp – and maybe she’s being overly dramatic and probably she is, but she can’t help it, can’t combat the worry that sinks like a fat rock in her stomach.

She would, quite literally, die for Laurel. She would do anything for her, and that’s why she respects her wishes, albeit reluctantly – that’s why she goes, without even having said a single word to Frank, though she thinks her glares have made it abundantly obvious how unwelcome he is here.

That’s why she shuts herself in the bedroom. That’s also why she presses her ear up against the door, listening to detect the slightest hint of trouble, ready to pounce.

For a moment all she can hear is silence – ominous silence, before Laurel speaks up, voice muffled through the wood but audible for the most part.

“ _What’re you doing here_?”

A pause. “ _That’s not a very warm welcome_.”

“ _A warm welcome? What did you expect? You… y-you disappear for months, no note, no… nothing, and what? I’m not supposed to be mad_?”

Frank sighs. “ _I know. Look, I… I get it, Laurel, I do. But I had to go_ -”

“ _Why_?” Laurel cries, and her voice breaks, and Michaela aches at the sound.

Aches because she knows, right then, that Laurel still cares for him. She can hear it in her voice. She’d seen it in her face. She still cares, maybe still even loves him, and it shouldn’t come as a surprise to her, but it does.

And it scares her out of her goddamn mind.

“ _Why’d you have to go_?” she demands again, when he doesn’t answer. “ _I… I went to your place, after you left. When I got to your bathroom I thought_ -” She cuts herself off, voice thick. “ _I thought you’d be dead, Frank, I was so scared that you’d_ …”

“ _Laurel…_ ” He lowers his voice. “ _Hey, c’mere_ -”

He must reach for her, but Laurel’s reply is sharp. “ _Don’t_.”

Silence. Someone sighs.

“ _I had to go. When Annalise found out about Lila, I…_ ” He pauses, lowers his voice further. “ _We can’t talk about that with Prom Queen here, can we just_ -”

“ _She knows_.”

“ _You told her_?” he asks, and he sounds betrayed, wounded – as if _he_ has any right to act the victim after what he did. Michaela clenches her jaw at the thought, listens up.

“ _Yeah. I did_.”

“ _Why? Why would you – you’re not even friends wi_ -”

“ _We’re dating, okay? I’m dating her. She’s my girlfriend. So… yes, she knows_.”

This pause is pregnant, and so lengthy Michaela has to resist the urge to creep down the hallway to get a view of the look on Frank’s face; she imagines it’d be immensely satisfying. But there’s a time and a place for that, and so she has to settle for picturing it instead, staying right where she is.

Frank scoffs. “ _You’re kidding, right_?”

“ _Do I look like I’m kidding_?”

“ _Holy shit_ ,” he breathes the words. She hears the thumping of footsteps – him walking across the room, maybe. Pacing. “ _Jesus, Laurel, what the_ hell?”

Laurel’s voice doesn’t so much as wobble. “ _You know I’ve dated girls before_.”

“ _Yeah, but – Prom Queen? Seriously? She’s_ …” He breathes out, again, and doesn’t raise his voice, keeps it even. “ _What the_ fuck?”

“ _What_?” Laurel asks, through what sounds like clenched teeth. “ _What did you think was gonna happen? That I’d wait for you, and you’d come back and sweep me off my feet and everything would be the same_?” A pause. “You _left._ I _moved on. And we’re… we’re over_.”

“ _Laurel_ -”

“ _I can’t. What you did, Lila_ …”

She drifts off. Frank jumps in. “ _I had to, I_ -”

“ _You had to. Right_ ,” Laurel spits, and there’s venom on her tongue, poison in her words. Michaela hears her let out a breath, softening her tone. “ _Do you have any idea what that did to me? What… what_ knowing _that did to me_?” A beat. Laurel sniffs. “ _Do you know how much I had nightmares about it? That I was her, and… and I was up on that roof, and you were strangling me to death?_ ”

“ _Laurel_ -”

“ _I still do_ ,” she tells him, and sniffles again. “ _I still dream about it_. _I wake up and I can’t breathe, and I can’t stop._ ”

“ _I never meant to hurt you_. _I… I love you_ -”

“ _Well_ ,” Laurel interrupts, and she sounds like she’s crying but trying to patch up her leaks like a little kid fumbling with Elmer’s glue and tape, failing miserably, “ _that’s your problem then_.”

Frank raises his voice. Another thump. He must be taking a step towards her. “ _Just let me explain, Laurel, you_ -”

“ _I don’t want you to explain_ ,” is all Laurel says, ice-cold, unyielding. “ _I don’t want to… listen to you try to rationalize this –_ any _of this_.”

“ _But if you’d just hear me out_ -”

“ _I don’t care. I don’t want to know why you did it. I just_ …” A pause. She imagines Laurel raising her chin, holding it high with all the strength in the world, fearless and fearsome with all her beautiful quiet strength. “ _I want you to go_.”

“ _Laurel_ …”

The next silence is the longest yet, so loud it’s deafening, making Michaela’s ears ring. She stays frozen in place, ear pressed to the door, so overcome by emotion that it’s almost like she’s somehow feeling what Laurel is feeling on the other side of the wall, like they’re linked by some invisible chain. Clairsentience. Her throat locks up and her eyes swell with tears, and she doesn’t know why, knows she has to real reason to be so affected by this, but she is. She is because she feels exactly what Laurel is feeling right then, beyond all logic or reason, and it kills her to know there’s nothing she can do to make this better, protect her.

“ _Go_ ,” she orders, suddenly. “ _Just… get out, Frank_.”

“ _Laurel_ -”

He must reach out again to touch her, because she hears the sound of their feet moving, as he advances forward and Laurel recoils. Laurel sucks in a breath that trembles on the way in – and she can tell it’s her because she’s heard that noise before, seen her cry one too many times these past few months.

“ _Get out. And if you_ ever _come back here_ ,” she tells him, words steady and eerily measured, “ _I swear to God I will go to the police, and I will tell them what you did to Lila, and I will let you_ rot _in prison_.”

Michaela’s never heard Laurel talk like that; so vicious, her words savage and ruthless and cutting as knives, filled with that quiet, dangerous fury that’s ten times more frightening than had she screamed at him instead. Michaela doesn’t know if she’s bluffing. Probably she is – but the words seem to have the intended effect on Frank, because there’s another long moment of silence, followed by the sound of the front door closing. Chest tightening, she makes her way back outside and finds Frank gone; gone, like the ghost he is, as if he’d never been there at all, and there would be no evidence of the fact if it weren’t for the look on Laurel’s face.

She’s pale. Eyes shiny with tears, distant. She’s standing over by the counter staring off into space, unmoving. If Michaela looked close enough, she thinks she’d be able to see her lower lip trembling. She looks like she’s been knocked off her feet. Hunched over slightly, like someone has landed a punch square in her gut. She doesn’t even think she sees her, and Michaela melts at the sight, letting out a breath and going to her immediately, but stopping several feet away; she knows when Laurel needs her distance, knows her well enough to know when to hang back.

“Laurel?” she says, soft, but no matter how soft and nonthreatening her tone is, it still makes her flinch, as if shocked with a jolt of electricity.

Clearly she hadn’t noticed her approaching somehow, and she folds her arms, shifting on her feet and straightening her stance. She doesn’t, however, make any effort to reassure her, tell her she’s fine; they’d agreed never to lie to each other about anything, ever again, and even if she wanted to, Michaela knows she wouldn’t be able to now. Laurel is a paradox of a girl; bewildering, with eyes that hide everything, and at the same time nothing at all.

“Laurel?” Michaela murmurs again, quieter this time. She takes a step closer, a bit timidly, and reaches for her. “Hey…”

“Can you, um…” She swallows heavily, lowering her eyes. A rouge tear goes racing down her cheek, leaving a faint track behind, which she swipes away hastily with the pad of her thumb. “Can you go?”

Michaela furrows her brow, her stomach twisting into some grotesque, unnatural shape inside her. “Are… are you sure?”

Laurel nods, inhaling and exhaling deeply, still not looking at her. “I… I need to be alone, I think.”

She hesitates. Considers reaching out to her, but stops herself at the last minute – she knows she doesn’t want that, no matter how hard it is for her to hold back. Neither of them move for a minute, and Michaela just looks at her; so beautiful, so _hers_ , but so shaken that it guts her.

“’Course,” Michaela says after the minute passes, accepting without question, though the thought of leaving eats at her insides, corroding them like acid. “Yeah. I… I’ll go.” _I don’t want to. God I don’t want to, please don’t make me – but I will, if you want me to._

She would do anything for Laurel. She knows that. So she does.

She leaves, and the apartment door closes behind her, and suddenly it’s like it’d never been open to her at all.

 

~

 

 

She ends up at Connor and Oliver’s place, because – well, Connor and Oliver have alcohol. Good alcohol, and generally a fairly large quantity of it. After stewing at her own apartment for a few hours, she shows up at their doorstep in her sweats and lets herself in without explanation, going for their little bar in the corner like a heat-seeking missile. Normally she’s partial to drinking wine, but something hard and strong sounds _really_ damn good right about now, so she locates a bottle of vodka and pours herself a more than generous glass, plopping down onto their couch with a dramatic, dejected sigh.

Oliver, who hadn’t even had the chance to close the door behind her, just stares. “Uh… help yourself, I guess.”

“Sorry,” she mutters, lowering her eyes and making a face when she takes a sip out of her glass. “I just needed a drink.”

From his spot over by the counter in the kitchenette, Connor scoffs. “So you decided to barge in here and pilfer some of our liquor instead of, y’know, buying your own?”

Michaela sighs. “I… needed people to commiserate with too.”

“Well, we’re not really miserable, _but_ ,” Connor says, relenting and plopping down into the armchair near the couch, “feel free to miserate solo. We’re listening.”

“Trouble in paradise?” Oliver asks, as he makes his way over to the couch with his glass of wine and takes a seat next to her.

“Trouble,” she scoffs, not bothering to hide her disdain. “Yeah. Trouble with a damn beard.”

“Aiden’s back?” Connor asks, a bit teasingly, and she shoots him a withering glare.

“Not Aiden. _Frank_.”

Oliver frowns. “But… I thought he skipped town. Disappeared.”

“He did,” she sighs, and takes another, longer sip. “And now… now he’s back from the dead. Resurrected. Hallelujah.”

She almost makes a comment about how she wishes they’d used the trophy on _him_ instead of Sam, but stops herself when she remembers that Oliver is as yet uninitiated into their little murder club, and that Connor wouldn’t react well to her spilling those particular beans.

“He came by?” Connor asks.

She nods. “Yeah. This afternoon. He asked to talk to Laurel. Wanted me to leave.”

“Did you?”

“No,” she says, emphatic, before lowering her voice. “No. I’d… never leave her alone with him. And she told him. About us.”

“And?” Oliver presses, almost on the edge of his seat. “How’d he react?”

“How do you think?” she bites out a sardonic laugh over the rim of her glass. “He mostly just said ‘ _what the hell’_ a lot. I would’ve paid money to see his face. But… that doesn’t change the fact that he’s back.”

“So what?” Connor says. “Not like she’s gonna go back to him or anything.”

Michaela gives him a look, then slides down to the end of the couch and lays her head on the headrest, letting out a great sigh and reluctantly setting aside her glass. “You don’t know that.”

“She wouldn’t, though,” Oliver urges. “Like… you’ve told us how crazy she is about you, right?”

Michaela scowls. “Yeah, well, she was crazy about him too. His stupid fucking _smirk_ thing that he does. The whole macho, tough guy act. How he always… folds his arms like he’s in the mafia, or something.”

Connor narrows his eyes. “Is there a specific way people in the mafia fold their arms?”

“Yes,” she answers. “Like Frank.”

“So, what’d she say?” Oliver chimes in. “When they talked, I mean.”

“She told him to leave.” Michaela pauses, lowering her eyes to fiddle with the ends of her hair. “Leave, and never come back, or else…”

She drifts off, realizing she can’t say that, either – to either of them. Connor frowns.

“Or else what?”

“She just told him to never come back,” she finishes, rubbing her lips together. “And he left. She was upset, afterward. Told me she needed to be alone.”

“That doesn’t mean she’s going back to him,” Connor says.

Still, she’s doubtful. “She loved him. Like, _really_ loved him, and that doesn’t just go away. Not even if you love someone else.” She sucks in a breath, raising her eyes to the ceiling, knowing perfectly well how irrational she sounds and not giving a damn. “She’ll go back to him, and leave me, and I’ll just… end up alone. And probably _die_ alone, at this rate. An old spinster-lawyer with four cats who drinks expensive wine by herself every night in her giant penthouse and specializes in divorce law because she was scorned by love and likes to witness suffering to make herself feel better about her own pathetic life.”

Oliver raises his eyebrows. “That’s… oddly specific.”

“Thanks,” she deadpans, sitting up, reaching for her glass again, and mumbling into it. “I’ve given it a lot of thought.”

“Well, I mean, worst comes to worst?” Connor pipes up. “You’ve got Philly’s most eligible Doucheface to fall back on. I hear he’s still single.”

That actually makes her shudder. She closes her eyes and runs her hands over her face. “ _Please_ never say those words to me again.”

“For real, though,” Connor says, growing serious. He leans forward in his chair. “She won’t. Frank is old news. Old period. And slimy. And… like, crusty as hell. She’s lucky to have you and she knows it, and she’s not gonna go hop back on his sleazy dick for no reason just because it’s accessible again.” He pauses, as sincere and free of sarcasm as she thinks she’s ever seen Connor Walsh before in her life. “She’s really into you. She won’t go back to him. Just… trust me on that.”

Michaela nods, takes another sip. Tries to.

Tries, and comes up empty. 

 

~

 

For three interminably long days, she gets nothing from Laurel.

Not a call. Not a knock on her door. Not so much as a text reassuring her that she’s all right, not to worry. She’d said she needed to be alone; Michaela doesn’t know for how long, but she has a sense of impending doom festering in her gut, something dark and sinister slithering around her insides like a snake. She doesn’t think Laurel will go back to Frank, but she can’t be sure, and before she can shut it down the illogical part of her brain takes over, convinces her otherwise, fighting a continuous, exhausting battle with the other half.

Then, on the fourth day, she gets a text.

- _Meet me at Mynt 7:30?_

The clipped, almost business-like nature of the text unsettles her, though she tries to make herself remember Laurel isn’t much of a texter; one of the last few luddites on earth who prefers to have actual face-to-face conversations. She manages to find temporary solace in the fact, and unlocks her phone, tapping out a response.

- _Sure. See you then_

She hates how impersonal that sounds, and thinks about adding something – _I miss you. I love you_ – but it doesn’t feel right, like a photograph that can never truly capture how beautiful a panorama is, the essence of it, how it feels to really _be_ there. She considers typing the words, almost hits the first letter, but stops at the last moment and sighs, closing her messages and setting her phone aside. Words on an LED screen can’t convey what she feels properly, not at all – so she doesn’t try.

She also isn’t entirely sure what to think, why Laurel wants to meet her somewhere instead of just coming over. If she’s doing this to break the bad news to her, let her down easy with witnesses around…

Somehow she gets out of her own head, and stops the montage of worst-case scenarios playing on a loop in her mind’s eye long enough to focus her energy on getting ready. She goes classy: a simple, slinky wine-red bodycon dress with a neckline that plunges a bit lower than she usually wears. Black heels, hair down, glossed lips. Simple. Elegant.

None of it eases her anxiety. She steps in the door of the lounge, and it’s all ridiculously snooty upscale décor and yuppie patrons and dim blue lighting. And all at once there Laurel is, seated at the end of the bar – and suddenly, she feels small as a child all over again. Briefly, she remembers the night Laurel had given her back her ring at this same place, how she’d realized, then, that Laurel was not the delicate wallflower she’d thought, not even close – that she was dangerous, and if she was any kind of flower at all she was a rose with hidden thorns. The first time she’d looked at her and felt the true weight of her stare, the way she’d looked at her unapologetically, not about to beg for forgiveness, not caring, just knowing she’d done what was best.

_You were a disaster that night. I could tell you wanted to go to the police, but I knew if you thought they could find it, you’d stay quiet._

The words echo. Yes, it’d been the first time she’d realized Laurel Castillo was a force to be reckoned with; a hurricane of a girl, and she still is. Now more than ever, sitting at the bar nursing a martini and eating a plate of something, doing nothing at all but destroying Michaela the second she lays eyes on her.

She makes her way over, and slides onto the barstool at the corner of the bar, facing Laurel. The other girl looks up when she does, giving her a weak, distant smile as if she’d interrupted her in the middle of a thought. She’s underdressed for this place; almost comically so, in a leather jacket and tights while most everyone is in suits and dresses. Somehow she’d gotten in anyway, worked her powers of persuasion on the bouncer – or maybe just handed him a stack of her father’s cash.

The bar is cool white marble beneath her palms. The lighting is dim, the silver tea lights on the walls not doing much to brighten the place. Some 80’s new wave song is playing faintly in the background; a peculiar choice for this crowd, she thinks, but no one seems to be complaining. It’s early, not particularly busy, and she’s thankful for the privacy.

“Hey,” Michaela greets, and Laurel smiles, and it’s a happy enough smile that Michaela thinks she can safely assume she’s _not_ going to get dumped tonight.

“Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world,” Laurel quotes, eyes lighting up, and slides a French 75 towards her, “she walks into mine.”

Michaela rolls her eyes good-naturedly, and takes it. “Cute.”

“Mozzarella stick?” she asks, reaching over to her plate and offering one to her too.

She scoffs. Of course million-dollar-heiress Laurel Castillo would go to one of the most upscale bars in Philly and order deep-fried sticks of cheese.   

“I’m good.” She cocks her head to one side, letting herself relax and smile. “I had no idea they served those here.”

“You learn something new every day,” she quips. “They go surprisingly good with a martini.”

Michaela takes a sip of her drink, and for a moment neither of them say a word. Again Michaela can’t shake how odd this feels, like there’s some invisible wall between them, some sort of distance she can’t quite figure out how to cross.

“I thought we should get out, for once,” Laurel finally says. “Change of scenery. We always get drunk at one of our apartments, so.” Michaela doesn’t know what to say. Another pause follows, before Laurel meets her eyes, her shoulders drooping. “I’m sorry I didn’t call. Sorry I told you to leave. I was an asshole. I just…” She exhales, and all the air seems to go out of her lungs with it. “I needed to be alone, to… process everything. Frank. Seeing him again…”

“You don’t have to explain.”

“I hate that he’s back, though,” she murmurs, lowering her eyes to her drink. “I hate that part of me still… cares about him. And I hate that I was a shitty girlfriend, because… I wasn’t trying to be, Michaela, I-”

“Hey,” she interrupts. “It’s okay.”

Laurel looks unsure. “Yeah?”

She nods. “Yeah.” _I love you and I will love you forever, maybe probably ‘til I die. Of course it’s okay._

Another moment of silence passes. The song playing finishes, another starting up after it – same 80’s new wave, same synths and drum machine, this one slower. Laurel’s eyes light up with mischief, suddenly, and she gets to her feet without warning, pulling Michaela up along with her and abandoning her half-eaten plate of mozzarella sticks.

“C’mon. Dance with me.”

Michaela rolls her eyes, but smiles, and lets Laurel lead her over to the little open space beside the bar where no one is dancing. “This again?”

“It’s our thing,” she says with a cheesy smile, slurring the words the tiniest bit. “You can’t say no.”

Michaela accepts that. She can’t, and she doesn’t want to, not even a little, and so when Laurel draws her into a slow sway, wrapping her arms around her, a little giggly and unsteady and downright adorable in her tipsiness, she rolls with it without question, not caring if anyone is watching. They sway for a while, no real rhythm or effort, without even moving their feet. Michaela cherishes the warm press of her body, the tug of her arms around her neck, her soft dark hair when Laurel tucks her face underneath her chin, fitting as perfect as a puzzle piece against her. She’s in heels and Laurel isn’t which gives her a good four inches on her, makes her seem even tinier than she is, and when she looks up to her and smiles, big and dumb and a little loopy, it makes a laugh bubble up in Michaela’s chest without warning.

She thinks she could die happy, then, right in that moment. Die and have no regrets. Everything thing else fades away and there is only Laurel, and they’re the last two people on earth – and Michaela has always been greedy, always coveting more, never satisfied with what she has, but in that instant she doesn’t think there’s a single thing in the world she wants but doesn’t have.

She’s happy. Stupidly happy. This may be a dream. If it is she doesn’t care.

If it is she’ll give up living to sleep here forever, with her.

“I thought… you asked me here to break up with me,” she tells Laurel after a while, lips pressed into a thin line. “To tell me you were going back to Frank. When you didn’t call or anything…”

“No,” Laurel breathes, shaking her head, clearly surprised. “No, God, of course not. I’d never go back to him; I’d never wanna… lose this. I’d never wanna lose you, Michaela, _God_ no.” Their noses brush lightly. “I meant what I said, when I told him to leave. He and I are done – for good.”

“And if he comes back?”

“He won’t,” Laurel says, sure as anything. There’s bite in her tone. “Come back. He won’t.”

Another pause. The singer croons faintly in the background – _I need an everlasting love, I need a friend and a lover divine. An everlasting precious love. Wait for it, wait for it_ – and their gentle rocking becomes stillness, Laurel’s thin arms encircling her, Laurel’s face buried into her throat, nuzzling her neck. Michaela imagines they could fade into each other right then, become one body instead of two, merge like the sun and the horizon at twilight, and no one would so much as bat an eye.

“I love you, you know,” Michaela murmurs, and Laurel hums contently.

“Yeah. I know.” She laughs softly, and her smile is equal parts toothy and tipsy. “Right back ‘atcha.”

“You’re drunk.”

“Only a _little_ ,” she protests, cocking her head to one side, eyes bleary and hair mussed, all kinds of adorably disheveled in a way that makes her heart clench.

The song plays, fading as it draws to a conclusion and ebbs out of Michaela’s consciousness, becomes white noise in the background. It’s stillness, for a while. Only Laurel and the stillness, chests and hearts pressed together, every artery and ventricle as good as fused, pumping blood through their bodies, keeping the both of them alive, and after a while Laurel shifts, beaming up at her and breaking the silence.

“Let’s get out of here,” she breathes, and gives her a persuasive little half-pout. “Take me home?”

Michaela doesn’t answer, nor does she have to. She just takes her hand, holds it tight; the only sure thing in her life. The only thing that she’s ever had that feels like forever.

And she does. She takes her home.

**FIN.**

**Author's Note:**

> Come find me on [tumblr](http://laurelcasfillo.tumblr.com/)!


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